


Sun Rising

by tragakes (lejf)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Character Death, Set after TF:Exodus, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Switching, Zombie Apocalypse, someone has a breakdown basically every chapter, they're very emotional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-05 06:30:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14611626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/tragakes
Summary: They found Megatron in a dark room, in that nameless high-rise, sprawled out by the wall with a corpse at his pedes. His optics flickered on when they entered.“I suppose some things even Primes can’t solve, can they?” he sneered. It lacked heat.Z-Apocalypse AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set directly after the hearing that takes place in TF:Exodus. If you’re not familiar with the events there, Orion Pax and Megatron had gone to the hearing as friends, both testified against the caste system, and Orion was heralded to be Optimus Prime then told to search for the Matrix. Megatron, convinced that Orion had somehow manipulated him from the start, swore vengeance and war. 
> 
> The first three paragraphs are practically from TF:E, albeit edited. Some dialogue changed. 
> 
> so we start with Aligned, but in reality it falls from my grasp and i trip on it, howling AU AU AU
> 
> OK. Let’s go (:

“I’m ready to do what needs to be done, no matter how many Decepticons you drag up from the pits,” Optimus Prime said, his anger palpable in the Council Chamber. It was living, twisting, and writhing inside him, because Megatron had chosen to betray him after all that they’d shared.

“Ready to kill us?” said Megatron, his voice quiet with fury. “‘Usher in this new era you have spoken of’, indeed, but witness this: you go as you always have — to destroy my Decepticons’ lives. _Rot_ , my glorious new Prime!”

He assumed his tank alt-form then, and every Decepticon in the Chamber did as well, an ominous roar of noise as thousands of plates swung and slotted into place. Those that were wheeled or tracked tore through the back wall of the Council Chamber as they departed, leaving it collapsed and the two bottom balconies hanging at crude angles to show the wound of the sky between them. Or what should have been the sky.

No mech understood what they saw, in that moment. Not instantly. Movement slowed. Time, stopped. Still. 

Screaming, previously unheard in the riot of the hearing, rose from the city and sent chills down his struts. As though unlocked, as one, a torrent of mechs began to move around him. Anger dissipated for panic. Fleeing. Optimus processed it in slow-motion. What was happening? How…?

The streets were _dark_ though it was day, and they were filled with mechs, running, running in a flood-tide, swamped with pure white-eyed panic, judged under a leviathan that blacked out the entire sky and cast a darkness so absolute that for an unfathomable moment he thought Cybertron had been plunged underground. 

There was no understanding of its size. The curve of its body disappeared past followable view, deep lines cutting through it that he realised were traces of circuitry, circuitry that wound and twisted in squares and circles and layers and layers that must’ve been as high as their cities and stretched billions and trillions of miles wide—

Oh, Primus, he realised. Primus save us. Jostled by the terrified crowd out of the Chamber into the open, he stood there struck and blinded because it was beyond comprehension. It was an awful nightmare. He’d lost his friend to the madness of jealousy. He’d lost his life as an archivist to become a _Prime._ But somehow that still all paled under a creature as vast as the Cybertron itself. 

_Unicron!_ he heard, _Unicron is upon us!_

The chaos god himself that had, until now, existed only in the minds of the most religious and paranoid bots.

He was aware that he was the only one left, the only one transfixed. The kliks were slipping away. Everyone had fled, but he couldn’t move. Somehow he felt that this was no coincidence, that Unicron himself had come to defy this moment. He just couldn’t comprehend it. It couldn’t be true.

The earth shook with a colossal boom and then Optimus was falling, his helm striking the steps of the Chamber and the world turning over and over until he landed sprawled on his back and dazed. The light was so bright — was it even light at all? There was a spear of power gathering above, past the clouds, so pure and raw that the very core of him screamed out against it. 

It tore through the sky diagonally, mangling and igniting the atmosphere with electricity, and as it struck the earth somewhere far away, Optimus saw the whole world shudder. Then there was a shockwave of metal being ripped up, the clouds fleeing and swallowed in, wires and roads and buildings and streets torn up and engulfed, approaching by cleaving straight through Iacon like a tsunami then it _hit_ and he was hurled into the air like a speck of dirt, careening and lost. 

His audials erupted. His internals flexed against the pressure and then combusted. Energon and liquid instantly vaporised and expanded at the same time they superheated and instinctive response offlined all major systems before they blew apart. In the moment that he was in the air he was dead. All systems offline. His spark snuffed. And only when he hit the ground again and his upper-leg struts shattered with the impact did it slam his spark into re-awakening. 

_Primus!_ he cried out in his mind. _It cannot end like this!_

The world dimmed, churned. He fell offline and flickered back online in sporadic bursts, unsure when nor how time was passing.

“Orion.” Jazz was there, somehow, his body indistinct like shifting sand. Optimus remembered taking heart from seeing him in the crowd during the hearing, though the memory seemed a thousand years away. Optimus could not hear but he could still see, read Jazz’s lips and see the energon streaming from one of Jazz’s audials that was crushed flat to his helm and streaming from seams in his face and streaming from his mouth. “We’ve got to go.”

Go where? Optimus wanted to ask, but his vocaliser would not respond. They were at the base of the broad sweeping staircase of the Chamber, at the foot of the streets, and Optimus realised that it was his audials that were offline. He struggled upright, Jazz steadying him, because one of his leg-hydraulics had been blown out and he hadn’t even realised through the internal damage he had received.

There was glass and bodies everywhere, moving and twitching, groaning in pain. All down they street they lay, under that darkness as though they were already in the earth of their graves, and he moved to help them but his systems flashed ERROR ERROR ERROR and then he was purging his tanks, not just energon but the lining of his insides too, everything solid that had liquified in the blast. Jazz rubbed his wrist desperately and said words he did not hear.

But he did see the lights, when he looked up, trembling, wiping at his intake. Something huge had shot up in the distance and it wasn’t alone. Ten or twenty around them, forming perimeters around Iacon, and even further, from the other cities far in the distance, bright white lights were streaking up towards the dark planet that had filled their sky. 

Optimus’ optics cycled, zoomed, closer, closer — steadying and locking onto one of the lights, and realised it was not a light but a shining rocket, its engines roaring as it made its defiant flight. 

The one he’d locked onto… “Omega Supreme,” he said, unaware that he’d even spoken. The Guardians were myths themselves, as much as Unicron was, larger than any mech that lived. They were said to fend off any attack on the Cybertron as a part of the planet themselves. They were unstoppable. 

The hope that it spurred in him was unmistakable. Like a taut mesh snapping, sound rushed back to him to replace the void. Screaming, crying, distant, the shriek of engines, yelling, wires still crackling and electricity—

“Go,” Jazz said, suddenly, and the fear in his tone was so palpable that Optimus took his eyes off the rising Guardians to stare at his friend. His optics were blown wide in panic through his visor. “Go!” He grabbed Optimus and hauled him down the street, desperation in his every strut. 

“Where are we going?!” Optimus asked. “Why aren’t we helping these people!”

Jazz shoved them through an empty doorway, across a foyer towards a staircase. Lurching into it was like being swallowed. Optimus had the feeling that everything was muffled, that he was travelling up an oesophagus or intake of some kind. “How many of those legends have you ever read, Optimus? There are so many on Unicron, but–“

“This can’t be Unicron,” Optimus said, but felt in his spark that it was not true. They were still ascending, dripping and leaking energon behind them, stumbling, his pedes numb. Everything numb.

It wasn’t just _their_ energon, either. From underneath closed doors, energon pooled and oozed and was mixed with other internal fluids that Optimus did not need to know the names of to know that the mechs inside had died.

“You said those were the Guardians flying and that it was Omega Supreme. Were you too busy looking at the Guardians to see what they were flying _towards_? ‘Cause, Optimus—“ he turned around, because Optimus had collapsed on the landing with a crash, optics rolling upwards as his other leg had given out and the pain hit an impossible threshold.

“Primus, gotta crawl,” he heard Jazz saying, and tried, using his arms on the railings to help Jazz haul him up, carry him higher and higher. He trusted Jazz with his life. He couldn’t be a burden on his friend.

“I’ll tell you what they were flying into,” Jazz continued, vents blasting air, his own systems near breaking point, his hold on Optimus slippery with energon. “Unicron was opening his mouth. They’re going straight to the other side of the Veil as dinner, Optimus.”

“No,” he said.

“What’s more important,” Jazz said, choosing not to press his morbid verdict, “is that we’ve gotta get higher. If I remember correctly, it goes like this: the sky goes dark. The stars are swallowed, and the streets are filled with seas.”

“What… goes?”

“End of our world,” said Jazz. “There’s more to it. After.”

How do you know this? Optimus wanted to say, but everything was slurring too much. 

“Slag you hear as a cultural investigator. Stories from all over the place. Besides, I got out. Heard things. Half of it is bogus, but the other half–“ he laughed wetly, “guess it’s useful to know.”

Optimus’ mind spun from both fluid loss and damage but also shock. “After the seas?”

“Sharks walk,” Jazz said. “Whatever that means.”

They ascended forever. Optimus lost consciousness by the fifteenth floor, diverting all his energy to keeping his arms moving instead of thinking. He offlined all systems, optics, audials, any receptors, in single-minded determination.

So when he was shaken back into online and saw that they had reached the top, that the winds were crazily swirling, that the only other things close by were other high-rises — that Unicron, who had replaced their sky, was still there, and that the lights of the Guardians were gone — he collapsed against the concrete. Jazz stumbled and fell beside him, and they lay there in unconsciousness for a long time. 

He came to Jazz plugging into his visual port and sending him a feed as Jazz slowly got to his pedes and peered over the edge. At first the height and the disconnect between being fed images without actually moving was dizzying — Optimus was used to spending all his time in the Hall of Archives, not high-rises like this — but it was drowned out by the chaos was extreme, stretching too far to be comprehendible. Through the shattered glass and still bodies he saw medics and bots, working on those who were still living. 

“At least they’re helping,” Optimus rasped.

“No,” Jazz said. “They’re going to die.”

“We should’ve stayed down.” 

“I wouldn’t’ve let you.”

“Why are we here?”

“’Cause we need to see, and get some distance,” Jazz said, and his optics focused from their fifty floors onto the medic who was re-setting a mech’s energon lines. There was so much energon pouring from the mech that it was starting to puddle in the concrete. “No one else would’ve ran _up_ when they saw Unicron in the sky.”

Jazz’s visual feed swept down, down the streets, and Optimus realised with startling clarity that there was much more energon than there had been before. It seemed to be increasing.The medic reeled back in shock when he realised that the energon was a finger deep, flooding the city in a slow ooze. It was leaking from the walls, squeezing out from the cracks of the buildings, bubbling up from the pavement. 

“Iacon bleeds,” Jazz said. “Or Cybertron, really.”

The energon kept rising and rising. It couldn’t have come from mechs, surely. There was too much of it. Optimus did not want to believe it was true, but the more of it that he saw pour — medics and mechs who could walk trying to haul others to higher ground — the more he felt that Jazz’s ominous statement was true. 

They did not need air to breathe; the energon was not a threat in itself, but the eeriness of it was unmistakable. Something about it seemed too wrong to stay in. Optimus had never seen so much energon in one place. It would be like laying in the blood and corpse of their planet. 

The feed lurched as Jazz looked towards the horizon, where only the faintest light could be seen because Unicron still hung above their side of the planet. The clouds there had funnelled, darkened, as though something was still falling from Unicron down to Cybertron, or that Unicron was somehow touching and tainting their planet.

“We should get more rest,” said Jazz.

It was like he’d been clinging onto an edge and hadn’t even realised it. Falling into offline was much like falling — letting go and tipping back into an abyss.

When Optimus woke for the second time he still felt as broken, unwilling to move. But desperation for information overtook him; he crawled to the edge of the building by his arms alone to look down because Jazz was still in recharge and he wasn’t going to wake him just to borrow his optics.

His reflection stared back at him, only two floors down, and the energon was no longer purple, but black and impenetrable like tar. Two more floors. Two more floors and they would’ve been swallowed as well.

He pulled away from the edge and curled himself into what ball he could, feeling his insides protest and his frame burn. What he’d seen hardly felt real. Surely, any moment now he would wake and find that the hearing had not taken place yet. Megatron would still be his friend, he would still be Orion Pax, and Unicron had not descended above Iacon. The streets had not filled with energon that had turned black….

Black energon. With sinking feeling, he was forced back into his reality and realised that he recognised the description. He knew what it was. It was _dark_ energon. 

For a moment he felt the enormity of their destruction so keenly that he teetered on the edge of despair.How could Cybertron still exist after this? How many mechs had died simply in the prelude of what was to come? He was supposed to be Prime, new as the title was — he was supposed to lead the people. How could he lead in these circumstances? How many people were even _left_?

But surely he had to be grateful that he had become Prime before the disaster. Without the knowledge that the High Council believed him in, that the thirteen wisest bots across the planet had chosen _him_ , he did not think he would’ve found the strength to go on. They saw, and Alpha Trion saw, that there was something remarkable enough about him to be named Prime. Whatever it was, Optimus had to preserve it — a Prime could not fall to this. He would survive. 

He turned his new-found resolve over and over in his mind. It was like a shape made of crystal. Flawed and smeared with dirt, it was no beauty, but crystal nonetheless. Determination was precious. 

Two breems later, the energon had gone down. The pitch-black liquid had sunken into the ground as suddenly as it came, and in its place lay many bodies and picked-up debris.

The two of them sat and watched over the streets, not much left in their fuel tanks to do anything else without a plan in mind.A wretched image their city made. And not once did Unicron leave. It remained in geo-stationary orbit over Iacon, Polyhex, Kalis. Perhaps Uraya and Altihex too. What did the mechs on the other side of the planet think? What did they know? 

“Do you know what the energon was?” Optimus asked.

“Nah. But I was pretty sure whatever would come in would offline us.”

“Alpha Trion introduced it to me, right before the hearing. I think he knew the knowledge would be important.”

“Could’ve given a warning,” Jazz muttered.

“It’s called dark energon, the blood of Unicron. It sickens any energon it touches and it drives mechs powerful but mad.”

Jazz paused to ponder it. Then he joked weakly, “Sounds familiar.”

Optimus shook his head and immediately regretted the movement at the jolt of pain it caused. “Megatron isn’t mad. He’s spiteful and jealous. That’s different. I was told that dark energon changes you into something irrevocable.” He’d implied Megatron wasn’t irrevocable, almost without thinking — and _that_ would be something to analyse later, if it were relevant. For all he knew, Megatron was dead. 

“So the mechs down there were touched by it?” Optimus turned his attention down at the mechs, focusing his optics. “I need as much information as I can get, because we can’t stay up here forever, and if the flood’s gone, we can start moving. Or at least I will. I’ll bring back some energon and we can keep letting self-repair do its thing.”

“Look,” Optimus said finally. “They’re moving.”

Jazz stilled with an intensity of focus.

The mechs in the rubble were getting to their pedes as though they had never fallen down, cracking all their joints as though to work out stiffness, but there was something too unnatural in the action. Every joint moved separately, mechanically, as though by a puppeteer. 

Optimus said, “It brings them back from the dead.”

“Nothing can do that,” was Jazz’s immediate response. Optimus turned solemn optics to him.

“It doesn’t bring _them_ back. Their bodies, yes.”

A medic came hurrying out of one of the buildings, towards the mechs that were getting up. And all at once, all helms turned to the medic. It was unnatural, as though they all shared a mind. Optimus saw ten, no, twenty, thirty, optics lock on, and then out lashed a claw so quickly that it slit open the medic’s torso plating like it was made of plastic, and his tanks and lines and cogs and wiring spilt out. 

“We have to do something about this,” Optimus said. He was shaking. Partly from anger, partly from disgust, partly from horror. “ _I_ have to. I’m Prime.”

“I don’t think they care if you’re Prime,” Jazz replied. “Most of your limbs aren’t even working, Optimus.”

Horror rose in him, thick and gagging, as the medic was prised apart limb by limb as though he were a toy. Optimus found that he could not look any longer, but he caught the expression on Jazz: revulsion, yes, but also the inability to tear himself away.

“You went to Iacon’s pits,” Optimus said, out of the blue. It nearly pulled Jazz’s stare to him.

“I’m a cultural investigator. ‘Course I did.”

“Do you think violence is a culture?”

“You want to compare violence for amusement to _this_? Orion- Optimus, I think that’s a pretty awful comparison, or are you just trying to distract yourself?”

Optimus’ silence was grim. It was the latter. He realised belatedly how tactless it had been.

“Whatever. We can talk about that later. Not while… that’s happening.” And Optimus was aware that there were more mechs further into the city being taken apart, being cannibalised by the madness of dark energon. Jazz’s pedes clicked across the rooftop. “I’m going to go downstairs and see if we can find any energon. Seriously, don’t let your prudence stop you from looking. We need to know. What if they come up? Do they have any weaknesses? What are their behaviours like? Knowing will _always_ been important.”

With that, Jazz disappeared through the roof-top door. He let himself worry for a klik about Jazz’s safety, about their need for energon, about how Jazz might’ve been more upset with him than he’d left on, and then Optimus decided that worrying would do no good and that he’d follow Jazz’s instructions. He busied himself looking at the slaughter-grounds that were the streets. The initial frenzy had passed, he observed. The darkened mechs — recognisable by their dull-purple optics — no longer destroyed mechs completely. Instead they tore off single limbs or ruptured energon lines somewhere on un-suspecting mechs, usually with their dentae. After injuring a mech, they left them there.

It was savage and barbaric. Optimus couldn’t tell if there was any soul nor intelligence left in them, and certainly not from the distance. They roamed up and down, hunting aimlessly, and to his horror, they entered buildings where the doors were open because they’d been blown apart in the initial blast. Did they enter buildings at random? Were they prompted by noise? Movement? Sight? 

Did they know how to open the sliding doors? Had Jazz and Optimus closed the door behind them when they entered the building? How about the mechs on the lower floors? They would’ve been flooded with dark energon either way, because the windows had all been shattered. That meant Jazz was in danger. In his roughened condition, he was at a disadvantage against these bots that moved and fought as though they were in peak condition. Some of them were deeply injured — from the shockwave — but they moved in a way that was careless of their injuries. 

Surely it would burn them out. Optimus watched them move, hoping for any signal of weakness. Instead, all he saw was that eerie way they moved. They seemed to be connected in some way, where a darkened mech would turn around down the end of the street, and with seemingly identical movements and at the same time, so would three others that were littered in different places. It was as though they were following the same pulse. Unicron’s, perhaps. 

The more he looked, the more he could pick out that they tended to do the same thing at the same time. It solidified his slowly-growing belief that their own processors were somehow lost and that they had become— puppets, or fingers, of something larger than themselves. 

He felt a moment of mourning, then turned his processor to the practical. Perhaps they could use that to their advantage. Perhaps… 

He saw one of the mechs injured by the darkened ones earlier crawling down the street. It was ignored by Unicron’s turned mechs, and Optimus thought perhaps that could be a strategy — to find some way to be damaged minimally and to use that to avoid the aggression from the strange mechs. 

But as he watched, the injured mech stumbled and fell and would not rise again, his spark still bright in his chest. 

Colour changed, flickered, morphed.

Optimus was wrong. He did rise again, with dull and hollowed optics and a spark as dark Unicron above. 


	2. Chapter 2

 When Jazz returned, Optimus’s spark un-knotted with barely hidden relief. “Are you injured?” he asked. His legs were still a twisted and mangled mess beneath him. Without professional medical help, he did not think he would be able to walk again. 

“Had a few close calls,” Jazz said, kneeling to deposit a wide assortment of energon snacks and caches from his sub-space. “But that was only in the lower levels, and all the energon there has gone dark anyway.”

“It corrupts very quickly,” Optimus said, remembering the mechs that he’d seen darkening after injuries. 

“This should be fine.” Jazz pushed a cube towards him. “Drink up. I honestly don’t know how you’re still alive.” He was speaking a bit distantly, not meeting Optimus’ optics.

“Jazz…” Optimus said, looking up at him and cradling the cube in his servos. “You know that I don’t begrudge you anything. I apologise I brought up the pits like that before.”

“It’s fine. Really. I kept it a secret because I figured you wouldn’t approve. Figures that someone would’ve rat me out.”

“Tell me why. I’ll endeavour to understand.”

“Optimus, you know as well as I do that there's a lotta mechs we just don’t understand,” Jazz said, a hint of frustration seeping into his tone, but it didn’t seem directed at Optimus. 

“I do.”

“It’s in my instincts to wanna see and know. It was- a show. I went there to learn. But mechs got killed. Hell. A lot of them got killed. But I needed to see it and experience it to start to understand _why_.”

“There’s a saying relating to that,” Optimus cautioned. “Look into the abyss, and it looks back.” If it had been a need for knowledge and curiosity that had brought Jazz into the pits... it wouldn’t have been the worst place Jazz had gone. But it was dangerous nonetheless. 

“I never bet,” Jazz reassured. “I’ve never fallen into any traps like that when I’ve been investigating before. Trust me, I’m cautious.”

“I trust you,” Optimus said, and meant it. Jazz’s mouth quirked up into a smile. It seemed a bit wry, though. 

He settled down next to Optimus and drank from a cube of his own. “You’ll need to,”—tipping their conversation back to the present—“because with those legs, I think I’m gonna have to carry you everywhere. It’s no ballpark downstairs, I tell you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t your fault. You’re not built to resist blast or impact damage.” That was true. Orion Pax had just been a data-clerk, and that nearly brought the enormity of the realisation that he was _Prime_ again back on him. Optimus could not believe that his life had led up to this moment. 

“Are you?”

“I have some weirder mods,” Jazz said. “Why don’t we take off some of your leg plating? It’ll make for easier carrying.”

“Do you think the hydraulics are repairable? Maybe we should remove them too.”

“Don’t think we have a way to, my mech.”

Most of their energon lines had crusted over where there’d been splits, but movement would aggravate the injuries, especially something as dangerous as removing his own parts. Optimus didn’t think he was in danger of offline immediately, but serious conditions were looming in the future, for his internal systems, his limbs, the strain on his nanites and auto repair, and the stress on his tanks and lines.

They needed some way to leave. 

“Did you get in any comm. signal range?”

“No,” Jazz frowned. “Unicron probably ate all the satellites out of orbit, and if there are any communication frames out there, they’re either dead or not broadcasting.”

“Soundwave,” Optimus offered. The communications-turned-gladiator mech wouldn’t go down that easily, and he didn’t personally know any others. Iacon was supported mostly by the Grid instead of individual mechs as communication hubs. Although, there was a high likelihood that Soundwave had simply been unlucky and caught out in the blast or lost in the dark energon.

“What are the chances that he’s still alive, let alone that we’d run into him?” Jazz seemed… Optimus couldn’t put a label on his tone, actually. There was a sort of distance to it, as though Jazz was really calculating the chances with numbers and certainties, or maybe he was lost in some sort of memory of the Decepticon. “The ‘cons in the city for the hearing make it all worse. They’re harder to fight.”

“A different mech would’ve said that they were afraid because they might have to team up.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not that mech.” 

“Then perhaps we should send a distress signal, if we’re both accepting of who might pick up,” Optimus said. “I know you keep those on you. You gave me one when I went to Kaon.”

“Are you sure it won’t be _those_ guys?” Jazz asked, tipping his head pointedly towards the streets below. 

“I believe so,” Optimus said. “We could take the risk, nonetheless. There have to be some fliers still around. So many came with Megatron for the hearing, from Vos.”

“Flight frames are _fragile_ , and I don’t think I saw any shuttle-classes. I hate to say this, Optimus — but the chances of them getting out of that first shockwave are pretty slim.”

“If we don’t try-“ Optimus looked down at his legs. Looked up at the layer of crusted energon and grime coating Jazz. “There aren’t that many chances for us,” he said. It came out much more softer and vulnerable than he would’ve liked, but Jazz’s expression shifted immediately. 

Optimus wasn’t going anywhere without taking up most of Jazz’s fuel and arms. They’d be defenceless and clumsy if they moved — if there even was anywhere to move. Optimus couldn’t justify just _staying_ and slowly rusting on the rooftop while Jazz ran for supplies, though, either. Sooner or later Jazz would be caught out, or the building would run out of stored energon. It was only a matter of time. 

Optimus’ wounds were sand grains in an hour-glass, and while Jazz’s self-repair had done much work — Optimus recalled Jazz’s face leaking energon from a thousand micro-tears. The load would reopen those wounds and break him as well.

There really weren’t many chances for them.

“I’ll get one going,” Jazz promised, and leaned forwards to squeeze his servo with reassuring strength. “You know that–“

He paused, looking for something in Optimus’ face, a slant of calculation crossing his optics. He must’ve found it, though, because he continued speaking.

“-you’re prepared for the fact that the bot that’s going to pick it up will probably be Soundwave, right?”

Optimus shuttered his eyes. “There are thousands of bots in Iacon. Why do you believe it’ll be him?”

“Because he’s with Megatron. They have a personal vendetta, and it’s _our_ signal. They’ll use the information some way or another.” Distress beacons were automatically tagged with the activator’s designation. It was just part of how they worked. 

“There’s no guarantee that they’re alive.”

“Most seekers and flight-frames from Vos would’ve been blasted into offline, I know. But I’m sure Soundwave and Megatron — and Shockwave, remember, he came too — are _built_ to stand blunt trauma and pressure like that.”

“But the dark energon. It rose up to the _twenty seventh_ storey.”

“They would’ve been flown out of it. Soundwave’s a flight frame,” Jazz said, and _that_ , Optimus should’ve know but didn’t. 

“He is?”

“Those arms are for jet wings.” Optimus could only wonder how Jazz had come across the information, but he should hardly have been surprised. Jazz was the one that’d encouraged him to go to Kaon to meet Megatron in the first place. He must’ve done some research of his own to ensure that Optimus — Orion, at the time — would be safe. “So yeah, chances that they’re alive? High. Chances that if we put out a distress signal and they’ll see? Also high.”

“It’s alright,” Optimus said. If Soundwave did find them– “I would want to talk to Megatron. Vendetta or no, they wouldn’t attack us now.”

“You say that, but are you sure you know them that well? You didn’t think Megatron was going to turn on you in the trial.” Which was supposed to be the ultimate show of their alliance, Jazz didn’t say, but Optimus heard. Megatron _had_ betrayed him — had mocked and swore vengeance against Optimus as soon as Orion had been called Prime. 

Optimus has asked him, ‘Brother, you believe me. Don’t you?’ and Megatron had said, ‘I believed you before.’

It’d hurt more than he could’ve imagined. Megatron, paranoid and spiteful, had abandoned him instantly just because he had been named Prime. He hadn’t chosen it. He couldn’t have. He couldn’t have even seen it coming, but who would he have been, to shirk from responsibility that had been thrust upon him? Who would he have been to refuse it? He promised that he would use the position for good, and Megatron had leapt to accusing Optimus of being power-hungry and manipulating him from the start.

Optimus wished he could’ve fixed it. That was why he wanted to talk to Megatron. If Soundwave came, then it was for the better.

“Perhaps I do not know him so well,” Optimus said. “But I am familiar with his ideals, and I hope to find in him what I believe to be in the spark of any Cybertronian.”

“What, forgiveness?”

“No,” Optimus admitted, though forgiveness would be nice. But he should not have _needed_ to be forgiven, so it was not what he sought. “Trust.”

“Not for your own redemption?” Jazz said. “Not because your friend, your proclaimed brother-in-arms turned against you, against your judgement? Not because you’d failed to realise he’d betray you and you need to redeem yourself?”

Optimus glanced up with some shock. He’d forgotten how cynical Jazz could be, though he could tell Jazz didn’t _really_ mean his words. He was just coaxing Optimus into putting in more thought — he hoped. 

He would admit that there was a personal element to it, but redemption for personal affront was _not_ his primary motive. 

“He is important to me,” he said, trying to find some way of conveying the heaviness in his spark when he thought of the hearing. “Megatron — Megatronus, at the time — was the one who’d opened my optics to injustice. I owe him _everything_.”

“You don’t owe him anything,” Jazz said, actually sharp this time. “Your ideals you grew were your own. What you did was _on your own_. Do you know that this is how people get tied into slag and slippery slopes? I’ve seen my fair share of friendships and relationships go like this. One mech does something for another, and then claims that there’s a debt, so the poor mech has to keep giving and giving while they get shit-all back.”

He understood Jazz’s vehemence, didn’t resent him for it. “I’m under no illusions. He’s spiteful, he’s jealous, he’s violent — I know this. Yet I am a Prime now. It’s my duty to lead mechs to humility… to kindness. Megatron _is_ one of the mech that this revolution is–“

He stopped because that wasn’t right. It hit him suddenly, so hard it was like a physical blow. His vents flared almost painfully. 

“Was. Was for. But I believe in our tenacity to survive; surely it cannot be for nothing. If I cannot forgive _Megatron_ for his betrayals and presumptions, what mech can I? Hadn’t the revolution been to give every mech equal standing? He is the epitome of the oppressed.”

“Your spark is too kind,” Jazz muttered, flopping back. He stared up at the Unicron-filled sky. A strange expression crossed his face-plates, something contemplative in his usual pragmatism. “I’ll run the signal. As long as we’re prepared for what might happen.”

“We should not fear the living so greatly,” Optimus said.

“You should. We’re–“ Jazz’s visor flickered, “we were breaking out into civil war just before this. Old grudges die hard.”

Optimus knew that not all Decepticons would be so welcoming, but surely they would pit their own survival over attacking him and Jazz. The only one so vehement to meet, he thought, would be Megatron. Otherwise, only Autobots would come — for their new Prime.

He found himself regretting it, almost. What if bots came to aid them, only to be injured and offlined in the process? What sort of Prime would that make him?

But similarly, he acknowledged that it would be too stubborn _not_ to accept help. He would simply have to trust in any bots came to their rescue, trust in their abilities to stay safe. No mech could be too reckless simply because Optimus was _Prime_. He hadn’t convinced anybody that he was worthy of the title yet. He himself could still hardly believe it, but if the Councillors had chosen him… they must’ve been something. 

On the thought of the Council, “If a communications frame registered our signal, perhaps they would know if the High Councillors had broadcasted any emergency warning.” Had Iacon descended into complete chaos, or was there still hint of order, of any organising voice, anywhere? Would Optimus have to be it?

“There are a few blast-proof buildings in the city.” Optimus had thought so too, but if even the Council Chamber had been blown apart — though that might’ve been because the Decepticons had torn a hole in it first and compromised structural integrity — what building would still be standing? “Iacon hospital,” Jazz ticked off his fingers, “the Council Chamber, though that one’s lost. Enforcer stations, stadiums… I heard that some private companies were getting blast-proofed after the hits on Six Lasers and Polyhex.”

“The hospital,” Optimus said, with some awe. It was natural the hospital would’ve been heavily protected. It was supposed to be a bastion in times like these. If they were to defuse the ticking-time bomb that was Optimus’ dead legs, it would be the hospital. “It’s some distance away.”

Jazz nodded at Optimus’ limbs with a bit of a distracted air. He must’ve been reading through his diagnostic reports, though Optimus hardly wanted to look at his own. He’d taken a glance earlier and promptly shut them again. He couldn’t give in to fear nor despair. “I know a medic there,” Jazz said. “But if we turn up, we won’t be the only mechs trying to get in.”

“And certainly there are mechs worse off than we,” Optimus agreed. He could not be the first priority. The hospital would be too risky of a choice to go to — if they were even capable of movement. It would be a hotspot for the dead and alive alike. “For the time being, we wait?”

“Yeah. We wait.”

The distress beacon was un-subspaced from Jazz, and he placed it between them. It blinked blue and red.

*

Jazz did not cease his scavenging trips, while Optimus sat on the rooftop feeling useless and frustrated as the cycles passed. Although much of his internal damage had been patched, no amount of self-repair would mend his legs, and legless, he was a liability. He had entertained the thought of attempting to stand, of trying to put weight onto his legs, but rationalised that if it injured him further, it was not worth the risk. He’d spotted slow-growing rust on it. Disturbing it might allow the rust into his energon lines.

Meanwhile, the sky was nothing but the damning visage of Unicron. The only light to indicate days and nights were smears of blue on the horizon. Sometimes he heard things like distant thunder, enormous sounds of things breaking and falling apart. Buildings falling. He could hardly imagine it.

Was Iacon falling apart? Would _his_ building fall, too? He mourned for his golden city. It was his home. It was the home of many, but all that was lost now. How long would it take to rebuild?

And sometimes Jazz came back seeming shaken, or distant, and would plug into Optimus to send him what he had seen.

There was a surprising amount of energon to pillage. Many of the office-spaces had their own mini-fridges and doubled as living spaces. It did also mean, however, that the rooms were often still filled with their previous owners. Most of them were dead, shattered against the walls from the blast, and a few had offlined themselves. 

It was in the lower levels that Jazz ran into the darkened mechs.

He saw Jazz tearing down corridors madly with rabid mechs on his heels. Optimus’ spark dropped with horror as he leapt out an open window, out into the nothingness, but _swerved_ at the last minute, seeming to defy gravity as he flipped, magnets in his servos slamming him against the walls of the outside of the building. Beside him, through the window, the mechs hurtled after him and plummeted into the depths below. They smashed against the streets, one after the other, but even in their broken heap did not stop moving. They staggered to their pedes and shook their helms, even if their helms were smashed and half their processor hanging out, and crawled like insects in search of the prey they had been pursuing. 

Others, when they met one-on-one, Jazz sunk neat holes into their sparks until they dropped. Optimus felt pangs of distress to think that Jazz was offlining mechs — that there was the possibility that they were still alive, could be turned back — but did not mention it to Jazz. Optimus did not have another solution to offer. If he attempted to push that moral onto Jazz, he was only risking his friend’s life. He could not.

Optimus had been given a laser-knife. If anything came up onto the rooftop, though nothing had, yet, he would have to have _some_ way of fighting back. It felt weak and terrifying. He didn’t want to admit it, but apprehension dawned each time Jazz left. Each time it was possible that they would not see each other again. 

Jazz unplugged his visual feed from him. They’d deemed it too taxing to verbally recount how Jazz’s runs went, and Optimus had insisted on knowing — and offered him a energon cube that he took gratefully. He was just accepting a bottle of half-used nanite gel Jazz had managed to find when the roar of engines caught their audials. 

Across the permanent darkness of Iacon it was difficult to spot the blur that moved, a sleek streak of purple that sluiced through the air towards them, mirrored against what glass was left of buildings like a hawk above water. With the familiar sound of plating swinging, Soundwave transformed before he hit the rooftop. He was everything Optimus had remembered, darkly silent with an air of solemnity surrounding him, standing motionless with the weight of calculation. 

Jazz — and perhaps it was testament to how long they’d been up there — _laughed_. It was a bitter laugh, though Optimus caught some hints of mirth behind it. “Told you,” he said, to Optimus. “Told you it’d be Soundwave.”

Soundwave seemed not to want to deign this with a response, his visor and cabling completely still. Optimus could hardly believe Soundwave was really there. He hadn’t seen a mech up close that wasn’t Jazz for the last deca-cycles. 

A recording of Megatron’s voice cut through the air. “Follow me.” 

In moments Soundwave was in his alt-form again, the jet laid out in front of them, the cockpit open. Soundwave in his proto-form was smaller than Optimus, but his alt-form had to have some form of space transformation. The two of them would be able to fit. 

Jazz scooped Optimus up, his legs dangling like dead weights from him, with no hesitation. It was a typical Jazz facade, Optimus mused. He practically sauntered into the cockpit. When they were seated inside, the interior not too roomy, Jazz busied himself exploring the dark plush of the insides. It must’ve been where Soundwave usually carried his minicons. 

The thrum of engines surrounded them — Optimus vaguely uncomfortable, being inside another mech like this, even as transport — but they did not speak. Soundwave was doubtless recording, and, for all that they’d discussed the eventuality, it was wise to be cautious. 

It was impossible to determine where they were going except for the feeling and sound of the engines. There were no windows to look out of. 

When they landed and Jazz eased them out, it was on the rooftop of another high-rise with which Optimus was not familiar. As soon as they exited, Soundwave transformed back, and led them through a door to a stairwell that they took down. It was a tunnel into silence. Not the anticipatory silence of an ambush, but the silence of desolation. Soundwave seemed at ease with it, but Optimus saw Jazz watching every move of his. They were vulnerable; if they were attacked, with Jazz’s arms full and Optimus immobile, they would be overwhelmed. 

Eerily, they passed by bodies of mechs in the corridors, though Jazz showed no surprise at them. Optimus knew that the building they had stayed on would’ve been much the same, had seen so in Jazz’s feeds, and would’ve seen with his own eyes if he’d ever been on its floors, but it unnerved him nonetheless.

It was more death than Optimus had ever seen.

He hadn’t been in _side_ a building since the dark energon had drained away. It was strut-chillingly empty. If he had doubted that Cybertron itself had been bleeding and injured before, he didn't now. He’d never noticed how latently alive his surroundings were until he’d entered such a concrete tomb. Doors hung ajar, furniture lay crumpled, paintings had fallen from the walls, cracks had appeared around the seams of doorways and ceilings. 

They found Megatron in a dark room, in that nameless high-rise, sprawled out by the wall with a corpse at his pedes. His optics flickered on when they entered.

“I suppose some things even Primes can’t solve, can they?” he sneered. It lacked heat.

Soundwave moved to his side while Optimus and Jazz remained in the doorway. He folded himself down to crouch beside Megatron, dark swathes of plating seeming to fold away and tuck together, and Megatron reached out a servo to greet him, thumbing over the curve of his helm and murmuring something that Optimus swore was, “Well done.”

“What,” Jazz said flatly, “he your turbo-puppy now? Fetch?”

“You don’t understand. Don’t presume to,” Megatron replied, optics narrowed. He didn’t look very damaged, though Optimus shouldn’t have been shocked. It was _Megatron_. He could survive anywhere. At most he showed signs of frame over-taxation. 

They would lose in a fight. 

“What do you want us here for, Megatron?” Optimus asked, before Jazz could build more hostility.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t order for you to come. I wasn’t aware you were still even online. Soundwave decided that on his own.” His servo resumed petting at that, as though to reassure Soundwave that this choice hadn’t been an act of insubordination. “Though I must admit, it isn’t surprising. How rueful it would be if our new Prime offlined so insignificantly.”

Jazz’s plating flared in a sign of aggression. “And how _sad_ that you’re not surrounded by your fellow Decepticons. What happened to them? Turned tail?”

“Separated and or deactivated,” Megatron replied coolly. “Though that result seems to be similar to what you’d announced to desire in the wake of our hearing.”

“This isn’t the time for grudges,” Optimus cut in, again. Jazz and Megatron seemed to be an awful combination, though he couldn’t fault them. Jazz never held back with his words. Neither did Megatron. “Megatron, since we’re here… we’d be grateful for your assistance.”

Megatron stilled. Giving it actual consideration. “We’re enemies, are we not?” he asked, venting out heated air.

“We don’t have to be,” Optimus said.

The pause for thought was not long. Megatron said, “You may stay,” and it was easy as that. He leaned his helm back against the wall again and offlined his optics, one arm curled protectively around Soundwave, who had already fallen into recharge half-way through the conversation. 

Jazz seemed not to know how to react, his visor flickering unsteadily. “Oh what the frag,” he said, and placed Optimus down, grabbing the body in the room by its pedes and dragging it outside. It scraped unpleasantly and loudly as it went, though neither Megatron nor Soundwave reacted. Then he returned and picked Optimus up again, and they stepped into the corridor. 

“Where do you want to go?” he asked. 

Optimus flicked an audial questioningly. “Not too far. We don’t know if there are any dangers in the building. We’ll have to ask them when they finish recharging.”

They wandered the corridors aimlessly for a while — everything empty, offlined bodies everywhere, some of them from the blasts, others clearly put down — until Jazz grew tired of carrying Optimus and he settled Optimus down in a chair in a room that used to be an office. It had an overturned desk and was scattered with glass from a broken window. 

It was very quiet. Optimus wasn’t used to hearing so little wind after being on the rooftop for so long. 

“It’s just them,” Jazz said. His words were filled with a weariness that he’d been keeping in. “Y’know, I thought– if someone did survive, it’d be Megatron and his criminal gangs.”

“We’re on equal footing.” There were two of them each. 

Jazz laughed drily at that, settling on the floor by his nonfunctional legs. “Not really.” The weariness was abruptly reeled in again. “Hey, wanna cuddle? Megatron’s got the cuddle bug going on with dark and mysterious in the other room. Why don’t we?”

Optimus had noticed that too. It was hard not to. “Are they in a relationship?” It was difficult to pinpoint how he felt about that. From what he’d seen of Soundwave and Megatron, he wouldn’t have thought so. It struck him discordantly. Uncomfortable. 

“Don’t think so,” Jazz said. “Primus knows why they’re doing that.” His tone was a little too relaxed, just on the very edge of too casual for him to have no idea. Optimus didn’t press. 

What had Jazz seen that Optimus hadn’t? What had he noticed that Optimus hadn’t? He felt blind as usual. 

“Hey,” Jazz said, picking up on his distress. “Relax. I don’t think it’s anything harmful to us. Unless you’re jealous?” He leered. “I’m here for you, sweety-pie-OP.”

“I think I’m fine,” he said distantly. Jazz laughed again, and then rested his head against one of Optimus’ legs.

Optimus hadn’t seen Jazz in such high spirits for a while. Despite all his hostility, Jazz must’ve felt safer, knowing that Soundwave and Megatron were in the building. Safer knowing that his future supply runs probably wouldn’t have to be on his own, that someone else would be looking after Optimus as well. Even if it was with Decepticons, Megatron and Soundwave weren’t unhinged. Perhaps they could reconcile past the poor terms they’d parted on.

“Recharge.” The suggestion was fond. Hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you hate soundwave or jazz or any of these main four characters, this fic probably isn't for you, because they all get significant screentime and are instrumental in some way to the PlotTM. and also 'cause i love 'em


	3. Chapter 3

When they woke a few breems later, they returned to the storage-room where Soundwave and Megatron had been recharging. Megatron’s optics were offline still, but Soundwave’s helm lifted when Optimus, carried by Jazz, opened the door.

“Hey, sweet,” Jazz cooed, kneeling to place Optimus down and turning to Soundwave. “Wanna show me around your home? Show me where’s dangerous? What buildings we can scavenge?”

Optimus thought his behaviour was odd, but didn’t question it. It had no affect on Soundwave because he remained still and unresponsive under Megatron’s arm. 

“Go,” came Megatron’s low rumble. Immediately Soundwave unfurled and exited with barely a glance, Jazz following. Optimus was given a cheery wave before the two of them disappeared, and then he was alone in a dark room with Megatron.

Optimus couldn’t leave even if he’d wanted to. Fragging Jazz — sly as ever. He didn’t doubt that Megatron wanted him here, either. 

Megatron’s optics were still closed. His ventilations were steady. He reminded Optimus of a slumbering giant, the kind that guarded a treasure hoard jealously. 

“Are you injured?” Optimus asked. It seemed like a safe place to start. 

“No.”

Or not. The silence held heavy and pregnant between them.

Megatron cracked open an eye. “But you are. I suppose that was from the explosion?”

“My frame isn’t built to stand it. I’m only a data-clerk,” he said, almost apologetically. 

“Only a data-clerk.” Megatron snorted. “A _Prime_.”

They’d reached old wounds sooner than Optimus had expected. He chose his words carefully. “That doesn’t make my frame any stronger. You know there’s nothing all too special about it.”

“And yet you were chosen by the Council as Prime. What does that tell you?” Megatron’s eyes snapped open. They were, Optimus would admit, very effective. There was something about the colour and intensity of his optics that was simply magnetising. “That it was for manipulative purposes.”

Optimus wanted to disagree, but did not aloud. This shouldn’t be escalated. He said, “It was a step in a direction they believed was better. If they wanted to show that they would relent caste— why not choose a mech that had no great caste to speak of?”

“It was to make you _agree_ with them, Prime. You were a contending spirit against them and affecting the middle castes. Once they crowned you, you bowed to them.” Megatron seemed to find the very idea distasteful, lips curling. 

“I would never have bowed,” Optimus said. “I accepted it because I saw that it could be used for _our_ purposes. But you did not believe me.”

“How could I? You had been defying them _until_ they announced you to be Prime, where you told them that you respected them and would honour their wishes!” Megatron’s servos clenched into fists. “Tell me, Optimus _Prime_ , do you even recognise the treachery for what it is?”

“It was no _treachery_. My intentions and motivations were dedicated to you still!”

“You _knew_ I’d implied them to name me Prime as a _test_. When we were side-by-side on that stand we were not united but _compared._ ”

“Oh, then you admit this to be what it is?” Optimus’ field flared wide and encompassing. “Jealousy?!”

Megatron’s servos flashed into claws. “I don’t think you understand,” he growled. “They betrayed me in selecting you, but that was no surprise. I had not expected better from the Council. The betrayal and treachery was from _you_.”

“Everything was done with your best intentions and mine,” Optimus shot back. “It’s not my fault if you jump to the worst possible conclusion about the mechs you call your friends.”

“Naming you Prime while I watched was an _insult_!” Megatron snarled. “And — Primus curse you — you still do not see it! You took it, and in doing so, stood by them and _spat_ on me!”

“Not everything is about you!” Optimus wished he could move, could somehow stride over to Megatron and batter his helm until he saw sense. 

“You are too blind!” In a huge surge of movement Megatron stood. He towered in the small storage room. “Do you not recall what they said to you? ‘Usher in this new era you have spoken of so eloquently’– they chose you for your speech! For your goodwill! For your _eloquence_ and your passion and your–“

He seemed to be pained at that, and Optimus, caught up in the wave of emotion Megatron had gathered, shouted back, “So you _do_ admit that they chose me for something!” 

“The hearing was called _because of my actions_.” Megatron hissed, “I was there to answer for the violence that they condemned. They wished to placate me, to cease my people destroying their monuments, by answering to my ideals. _Of course it was about me!_ "

“ _And it was treachery_!” he snarled. He was a visage of terror, a dark shape enormous, glowing with red-eyed rage. 

Optimus said, “You see everything as treachery!”

“In my face, to answer to everything that had been presented to them, they would take a _data-clerk_ as Prime, laud him for his speech, for his eloquence — all his life that he’s spent poring through data-pads to form coherence —

“To show that they would choose anything over some mech like me _because I rose from the Well of AllSparks without even a name_! Because I was never supposed to see the light, never supposed to speak, never even supposed to think nor doubt nor feel anything in this empty pit of a spark—

“—Because all _my_ data-pads were prised out of cold dead hands in _ruins_ and through creds made by _killing_ and whoring my body like I was some corpse to jerked and thrown around— those people are the people who put hooks in my neck and–

“ _THAT_ is why they did not choose me a mech like me!” he roared. “‘ _Because you were more ‘eloquent’ and civilised_ ’?! Tell me, in what world would that have been a fair comparison?! You, raised among data-pads and shelves, or me, raised with scraps and rust and blood?! It was an insult because the comparison was one incomparable! It was an insult because they shoved at us a criteria that you were _leagues_ above in— because of the caste in which you were born! And this criteria was to judge who would lead us _out_ of caste-hood! Do you understand?! In naming you Prime, they had failed in their first task of recognising the flaws in their castes! No mech in Kaon could’ve been eloquent and good-willed and like you and _lived!_ ”

“And you accepted it.” From the pinnacle, all the fight drained from him at once. Noise suddenly a void. His knees crashed against the floor, and to Optimus’ shock, Megatron had somehow landed right in front of him, staring at the floor. “Truthfully, you were the only upper mech that cared. Certainly the others cared that they couldn’t go _up_ , but they didn’t care about _our_ injustices. You were the only one. You came to Kaon for us… and so they slipped that hook into your mouth and led you away, too, with these promises of being Prime.” His tone was so bitter. It was more bitter than Optimus could’ve ever imagined him capable of. He sounded as though his spark was breaking. “You took it. You swallowed it whole.”

In the vacuum of sound, in the quiet that was left behind, Optimus said gently, “I did not. I have always been on your side.” He could not fully digest the words. He could barely start to touch the agony and desperation that they carried. He reached out a servo automatically, to cup Megatron’s downturned helm. They were brothers, once. He remembered. Megatron had shown him around Kaon, shown him a shining vision, had shown Orion Pax words that he would’ve never believed any mech capable of stringing together. He was a _revolutionary_ , and although Optimus’ ideal for a revolution was not identical to his, it would forever be grown out of Megatronus’. “Perhaps without the violence,” he added, almost teasingly. In a reminder of their old times. 

Megatron’s servo came up to hold his to his helm. The warmth there, of Megatron’s against his, was not too familiar. But it felt right. “Treachery…” he murmured. “Our tragedy… of all things Unicron would destroy, he would not destroy this. For all that has fallen, you are still Prime. You are still my error in judgement.” 

“Come closer,” Optimus coaxed, and Megatron did, shuffling forwards on his knees. He lifted his other servo to the other side of Megatron’s helm, spreading his fingers over the scarred metal there. “I apologise,” he said, trying to meet Megatron’s optics. “If I had known what it meant to you, I would not have accepted.” He would’ve postponed until he could console Megatron, and only eventually accepted the title of Prime. It was not something he could’ve turned away indefinitely — he would not turn entirely against the laws, the opportunity to create change for the better, and the wishes of his people. But he would not have wanted to risk the wrath of his friend, especially since he _knew_ now that it would lead to further wars and spark-break.

Still, there was the lingering suspicion that Megatron was right. Optimus had been made Prime for qualities that no lower-caste mech _could’ve_ had, and that struck him uncomfortably.

His instinctive reaction when they’d named him Prime had been doubt, though he’d eased it away with trust in the Councillors and Alpha Trion. Now, in the face of Megatron’s tirade, that doubt rose in him once more. Because it _was_ all true. They had made him and Megatron speak, one after another, and chosen Optimus because he had ‘spoken so eloquently’ and stirred the audience into support. And the further symbolism of it too: the hearing had taken place in _Iacon_ , in the heart of the upper class, by those who had administered the caste system in the first place. Optimus had been vouched for by Alpha Trion, his mentor who had great sway in the council — and suddenly it hit him as a ‘connection’, one of those things he’d always frowned upon in the business circles. Mechs with _connections_ found better paying jobs. Mechs with _connections_ were admitted into Six Lasers. Mechs with _connections_ received medical treatment first. He had been a mech with a powerful connection, one to Alpha Trion, and it had significantly contributed to the fact that he’d been labelled Prime.

No bot from Kaon could’ve had such a connection. No bot from Kaon could’ve spoken so well. It— couldn’t…

“You wouldn’t do such a thing for one mech,” Megatron said. 

“The revolution has always _been_ for the ‘one mech’s,” Optimus said, grasping for the distraction. “The ‘one mech’s that Councillors would dismiss because caste-hood had brought space-travel and technological progression. Remember what Sigil said?”

“Yes.” Megatron sounded disgusted at the mention of him.

“If castes had brought prosperity to many, then surely the suffering of some was warranted.” He shifted his hands, so that one of his thumbs could trace over Megatron’s cheek. Perhaps he was crossing some line of intimacy, but Megatron did not seem to object. “We both hated him. Remember? He’s probably dead now.”

“For all the good that would do.”

When Optimus nudged his helm upwards, Megatron’s expression was filled with some unnamable restrained emotion, his lip caught between his dentae. Optimus’ spark lurched in his chest. He’d forgotten how _vulnerable_ Megatron could look. 

Primus, if Optimus believed that Megatron was capable of emotional manipulation, he would’ve reeled in that sudden desperate urge to make sure he never looked like that again. He would’ve tamped down the roar of protectiveness to make sure nothing would ever hurt him like that in this _world_.

Megatron tried to turn his head away, but Optimus’ fingers tightened. “We were going to go to the Well,” Megatron said, optics flickering up to meet his. They were obscure and unreadable, but Optimus caught pain there.

He sensed that there was a deeper grief to him than Orion’s announcement to Prime. In all likelihood, his Decepticons, who he’d fought so hard for to give lives, who had followed him to Iacon for a hearing to see their leader acknowledged — had met terrible fates. Megatron had suffered loss after loss. 

“To find the Matrix?”

“Whether or not it is there is debatable… More significantly, Unicron struck the Well. The Core of Cybertron itself has been corrupted with dark energon.”

His statement explained the bleeding of Cybertron and its subsequent descent into darkness, and raised–

“The rest of the planet?” Optimus asked, fearing the answer.

“Soundwave could access no signals,” Megatron said. “It’s likely that they are facing this same crisis.”

He had suspected it, had been haunted by it, but hearing it from Megatron was too much. He _trusted_ Megatron, even after everything. Megatron had no reason to lie. He had little reason to even harm Optimus now that everything they’d fought for had been lost. And so that meant it was _true_. The planet was dredged in dead mechs and dying survivors. “I had held out for hope.”

“Continue to do so. For as long as I have known you, Orion Pax, if you do not hope, no one will.” 

Optimus wanted to hold him closer for the honest endearment despite the simultaneous underhanded insult of calling him Orion. He wanted, absurdly, to clutch onto him and promise that it would be better. He wanted to help him so badly that it ached. 

“Pick me up,” he said instead, tone shifting to authoritative. “Show me around. Tell me about this building, and what path we will take to the Well.”

Megatron’s servos were gentle, easing his legs and his body into his arms, warm and steady and solid like a furnace. It did not feel at all like when Jazz carried him. “Yes, my Prime,” he said, and sounded the faintest bit bitter.

Soon they were wandering down the corridors. Megatron was strong enough to shift all Optimus’ weight onto one arm and still open doors, descend staircases. Out the windows they saw moving mechs in the streets below. He spoke of how they had tried to clear the building as best as they could, that there had been another group of mechs surviving here before them that had seemed to have internally collapsed. One had been infected and hid their wound and turned to kill the rest of them in the night.

There were dried energon stains in the shapes of pedes and hands that ended at corpses. Debris from the ceiling and blaster wounds in the walls. Wires hanging like entrails where the concrete had been ripped out. Corridors absent of windows as mouths that were shrouded in darkness. Optimus was glad for Megatron’s presence and quiet confidence.

“Soundwave took great risk in bringing you here,” Megatron said, as they entered a rubble-strewn floor that had an inter-connecting bridge to another building. It was piled high with strewn furniture that had been sealed together. “The last time he flew, we were shot down. If it were possible, I would have him fly us all the way to the Well, but we must prepare for contingencies.”

“Is that what you’re doing now?” They’d been talking for the better half of a few breems, fallen back into a familiar lull as Optimus struggled to comprehend the devastation of his city and its toll on his friend.

“Yes. We are gathering energon and whatever medical supplies we can, before we head east.”

“I’ll be a liability,” Optimus said. Megatron re-adjusted him, closer to his spark, though Optimus could not hear it beat through the heavy plating of his armour. Optimus felt a twinge of- _something_ in his circuits at the proximity, and ignored it. 

“You will be,” Megatron acknowledged. “Hopefully your friend will be able to make up for it.”

Again, Optimus felt guilty for the burden he was inflicting on Jazz. “Then you should leave me here. This place is safe, isn’t it?”

“Do you see that bridge?” Megatron replied. It was innocuously still and plugged up. “Any day it will give way and afflicted mechs on the other side will burst in here. Immobile, you would not last a moment. I’m surprised our shouting didn’t alert them earlier.” 

“I wasn’t the one shouting,” Optimus said. 

“You flatter yourself.” But Megatron still turned them away from the bridge, wary of its inhabitants. They were much closer to ground floor now, and Optimus could see the details of the mech outside more clearly. There was black energon stained in streaks down from their optics and mouths and their metal was clammy and pale. “Contrary to what you may believe, Soundwave didn’t bring you here to be killed.”

“What for, then?”

His mouth tilted into a wry smile. “I wouldn’t know.” The smile faded. “He is unreachable these days.”

Optimus gently turned the conversation away. He’d been trying to avoid broaching those pains, after their argument.

“Who built the barricade?”

Megatron turned to look. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. If he was relieved for the change in topic, he didn’t show it. “Perhaps it was to stop the energon flow, considering how tightly it is packed.” He gestured at the sealing foam wielding all the furniture together. “This building used to be for construction and architecture, I believe. I myself found a few building supplies in the storerooms.”

Something, perhaps self-preservation, or morbid curiosity, kept drawing Optimus’ optics to it. “You said that there were mechs on the other side. How do you know that?”

“You hear them on occasion. And we considered entering that building,” Megatron said. Sometimes when he said ‘we’ he meant him and Soundwave. Sometimes he seemed to mean a larger group. Perhaps when more Decepticons had still been alive. “Someone, or perhaps some event, had collapsed its front entrance, and left a message warning others not to enter.”

“There’s an arm there,” Optimus said. 

Through all the furniture, all the desperate pieces of metal that had been shoved and sealed together, there was a arm, followed by a body, and a table-leg jutting through its chest through its spark. Its helm was indiscernible through the mass. For that Optimus was glad, but it felt like a terribly pathetic thing to be glad for.

It was not the only body in the wall, not that he realised. Most of them were crumpled and compacted together, limbs distended, greyed. They could be mistaken for folded scrap metal. 

“There are horrors down every path,” Megatron said quietly. “We will inevitably stop to see many, but I do not believe we should linger long enough to be _caught_.”

There was a roar and rattle of engines that Optimus was learning to attribute to Soundwave’s jet form outside. Megatron snapped out of his reverie and brought them to a broken window and there they saw the dark jet tearing down the street, mechs hurtling after him. On the opposite building Jazz scaled— up the _outside_ , magnets in his pedes and arms, dodging mechs that were falling out of the buildings. They were leaping out, some with thrusters of their own, after Soundwave. 

It’d never struck Optimus how lucky Jazz had been, that one time. If any of the mechs chasing him had been capable of flight, Jazz might’ve died. Optimus would’ve never even known how. He would’ve simply been left on the rooftop until something, a mech or starvation or infection, offlined him.

Soundwave was clearly a diversion, spinning through a hailstorm of blaster bullets. A flight frame, falling apart enough that his internals were spilling out as he flew, shot up to intercept him. There was no reaction to dodge quickly enough. Soundwave tore right through the flight frame, whose body, already damaged beyond repair, _burst_ across him, energon splattering everywhere, raining down onto the streets below, wires caught and dangling from Soundwave’s wings. 

Bullets still whizzed past, though Soundwave pulled up for a half loop and pushed his thrusters even faster so that he shot back down the street with a colossal sonic boom, twisting through fire even while upside-down. “If he gets shot heavily,” Megatron said, tense under him, “he dies. Any open line can be corrupted by dark energon, and that flier coated him with it. After that is only a cascade of system failures.” 

How Megatron knew, Optimus didn’t ask. “He has no regard for his own life,” Megatron gritted. 

The gunshots from the ground were so dense that there was no way to fly between them. They sectioned off parts of the street, and Soundwave swerved and dipped and made to burst through the narrow space between two tall towers to escape. Then mechs, specks of colour, began falling from the upper levels of the towers. Soundwave had no way to avoid them, caught between buildings, gunfire, and the dropping mechs that were clawing for him even as they fell to their inevitable offlines. Any one claw could split open his plating and end him.

And so for a last chance, he transformed in a move faster than Optimus could follow until he was only in his protoform and plummeting straight down through the air, a spiralling and tumbling smaller target — insignificant against the blue horizon, caught between the blackness of Unicron above and Unicron’s mechs below. Going only one place: down.

Optimus was suddenly sure that he would witness Soundwave’s death. 

Then Jazz erupted out from one of the towers, blasters on full burn, soaring in an arc that could almost make Optimus believe that Jazz himself could fly. He caught Soundwave mid-air, twisting and landing on one of the floors of the opposite tower. He had something else strapped to his back, whatever precious thing they had risked their lives to take, though immediately mechs swarmed to the base of the tower, flooding into its doors, chasing. There was no moment of respite. 

Optimus _could_ hear Megatron’s spark, he realised. It was pounding beside him. The reason why Megatron had allowed them to stay so easily was clear to him now. He needed someone, anyone, to protect his loyal mech, to bring him back from his dangerous cliff-edge.

And on the bridge on the other side of the open floor, he could hear the waiting dead there agitated by the distant sounds of Soundwave’s engines, clawing, metal shrieking, even through the sealed blockade.

“Comm lines are down. That couldn’t have been co-ordinated,” Megatron said. “Your friend is much more capable than I could’ve expected.”

Soundwave had been _expecting_ to die too, Megatron meant. He would’ve died if it weren’t for Jazz. 

“What happened to him?” From the pragmatic, cold spy Optimus had known, this was nothing like it. 

“If you haven’t realised,” Megatron said, very subdued, though his spark was still loud in its pulses, “then it is not my place to divulge.”

He thought back to Kaon, the gladiator pits where he’d first met both Megatron and Soundwave and Shockwave. He remembered judging them all separately, with Soundwave as a mech to be wary of — he was a spy, after all, and Optimus had always been tangibly aware of him because there was no moment within the Pits that Optimus had not gone without hearing the pitter of minibot pedes listening in.

The silence of the corridors now.

“His minibots,” Optimus said, on an inhale.

“Symbionts,” Megatron said. “Pieces of his spark. Every last one dead, crumpled like thin foil under the hit of the blast.” 

Optimus reeled. In all this time he had never considered himself lucky, to not know whether his friends were alive or dead, to still have Jazz by his side, steady and positive, to not have a connection like a spark-mate who’d tear his life apart if he died. 

“He responds only if I give him orders. Taking you two was the only action he’d taken on his own for a long time, and even then, I think he did it for me.”

Optimus looked up at the implications of those words, meeting the optics of Megatron’s. Megatron ex-vented shakily. He rested his helm against the wall.

“I cannot leave you behind when we head east,” he admitted finally. “Whatever peace this is that we have now, that this sorrow stifles my anger, that this disaster stifles treachery… that I can look at you and see a brother and fleetingly forget that you have failed me … I do not think I can lose much more. It will cease to stifle and in its place _drown_.” 

Optimus raised his servos and took Megatron’s helm between them. He could not promise he would not lose anything else, but could remain there as steady points of contact. Within all that he was losing, could remain there as faithful rocks within the tide. Rocks that would be worn down to sand. Sand in hour-glasses. Ticking down.

They stood there until something clattered in the blockade. A claw was wriggling in a small gap that had been pierced through a thick metal bench, though it retreated like an animal head into its burrow when Optimus looked. And was replaced with a hollow optic.

“Megatron,” he whispered, frozen with horror.

Jerking into alertness, Megatron turned. The optic was gone, but the hole was still there, flickering between light and shadow as things moved on the other side. 

He took them back to the dim stairwell and bolted and triple-sealed the door shut.


	4. Chapter 4

Though Optimus hadn’t believed that it was still possible with Unicron hovering above, it had started to rain when Jazz returned. He was venting heavily from exertion, plating dented in places but not torn as he hauled himself onto the rooftop, having climbed all the way up. “Give me your wrist,” he said. Megatron immediately did. Jazz plugged in and delivered him a visual feed, all the while saying, “He’s still out there, out north, close to the old watchmaker’s. You could probably lend the firepower. I’m totally out.”

Megatron was gone as soon as Jazz released him. He leapt off the building, landing on one of the broken lower level decks with surprisingly little sound, and then jumped for a deck on an opposite building.

“Primus, Optimus,” Jazz said. He practically slid to his pedes beside where Optimus sat by the door. “I’ve had enough close calls for a lifetime. Worth it, though.”

“I’m wasting energon,” Optimus said, quietly enough that it might’ve been lost under the rain.

“Give me a back massage,” Jazz replied, dropping his cargo and gesturing to a spot between his shoulder-plates. Optimus willingly complied. “Slaaag, that hits the spot.” He tipped his helm back, and then aimed a lopsided grin towards his friend. “Not wasting energon, see?”

“Jazz.” His tone carried a hint of reproach. 

“You’re gonna have to kill me to get me to kill you. But if you kill me, I’ll be dead, so that doesn’t work out, does it?” Jazz stretched languidly. “Seriously. If I’m left out there all the time, I’m gonna go crazy. It’s hard to stay chipper.“

“Is Soundwave reckless?” Something in Optimus’ tone, perhaps the caution in it, seemed to tip Jazz off that he _knew_.

“Reckless? No. Reckless and Soundwave’ll never go together. Just that if there’s an equation that needs calculating, he counts himself as zero. It’s disturbing to see a mech just _not care_ like that.”

“His symbionts died.” He was half sure that Jazz already knew.

“Yeah,” Jazz said, all traces of humour gone. “I know. I figured, yesterday. If they were alive I would’ve heard them somewhere. How’s Megatron, though? Shining bastion of hope? Got him to carry you around, looks like.” 

“We’ve made a start to peace.” And how lightening that felt. He felt warm at the memory of Megatron against him, stalwart, his helm a heavy weight between Optimus’ palms. 

“Primus, no need to smile like that,” Jazz muttered.

“But he’s despairing.” Optimus shot Jazz a look not to continue that train of teasing. He didn’t know how he felt about it — it probably wasn’t welcome. “So no, no bastion of hope.”

“That’s why we need _you_ ,” Jazz said. Optimus felt that he’d somehow walked right into one of Jazz’s word traps. “The world’s out to grind us down, and it’s doing a pretty damn good job of it so far. I lied, my mech — stay smiling, okay?”

“One cube per smile.” 

Jazz laughed at that. He had been gone several cycles while Megatron had stayed to guard Optimus, recharging opposite each other in the dark storeroom, wandering through the building and talking quietly about things that were not the past. Megatron would leave sometimes and bring back energon, surprisingly unscathed. 

But Optimus found that he’d missed Jazz, still. Mirth. 

They couldn’t indulge for too long. “This would be a good time to leave, when they return,” he said. “The rain can cover the sound of Soundwave’s engines.”

“Go where?” Jazz perked up. There was a sharper undercurrent to his tone, though.

“They, or at least Megatron, planned to go to the Well, to fix the Core. Or at least try to.”

“You sure they aren’t just trying to go for the Matrix?”

“I’d heard it was in Crystal City.”

“Heard it was in Altihex.” Jazz clicked his glossa. “Rules that out, I guess. Doubt that they could find good intel in times like these, and if they knew before, Megatron would’ve boasted about it in the hearing.”

“We should go with them.”

Jazz’s gaze was scrutinising, even though he could turn his helm only enough to fix one optic through the visor at Optimus. Finally he relented. “Yeah. Can’t imagine going on without a goal.” He rolled his shoulder again, and Optimus turned his attentions to massaging the wires there. 

“And this building is dangerous,” Optimus warned. “There’s a blockade in the lower levels, but I think it’s about to give way.”

“Ah,” Jazz said. “On top of that, did you take a look at the mechs outside? There was a slag-ton of ‘em, ‘cause yesterday when Soundwave came in with us, they were drawn by the sound. Last coupla cycles was a lot about leading them back away.” 

“That means we owe them.”

“Don’t think this is a time for debts, my mech. Unless Megatron wants to trade in debts?”

“No. He just wants you, or us, to help Soundwave.”

“I’m helper extraordinaire,” Jazz announced. “Watch me. I’ll have him springy in no time. I already more or less told myself that I would. It’s just- damn, it’s so _wrong_ to see someone like that. I can’t leave him and live comfortably with myself.”

Optimus didn’t know how to reply to that, so he said, “I believe in you.” 

They sat in silence for a while, Optimus concentrating on relaxing a particularly tense knot in Jazz’s wires, just listening to the solvent rain fall. “Primus, imagine being alone out here,” Jazz said. Maybe he was thinking about the fact that he’d left Soundwave alone while Megatron went to cover for him.

Optimus didn’t even want to imagine it. For the brief stints that Jazz had left him on the rooftop, he’d already felt awful. Awful and fearful. Now his optics had been opened to the even greater danger of the darkened mechs, and he simply… couldn’t imagine living with that despair, constantly living on that edge. It would destroy even the strongest processor. 

“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

“Lucky we’ve got this rag-tag group of four then, huh? I know it couldn’t have been nice on you, being on that roof. Sure was shitty crawling through the corridors alone.”

“Was it more or less dangerous with Soundwave?”

“We went for bigger picks,” Jazz said, dodging the answer — as usual. Optimus dug in some of his fingers. “Ow, ow- no, not necessarily riskier. Not for me. He’s _good_.”

“You’re telling me that tower jump wasn’t risky?”

“You saw that?” Jazz’s entire field lit up in surprise. “Well, yeah, not something I do everyday. But I saw him falling and he was slagged otherwise. It feels good, though. Good to have a partner. Not anything against you, Optimus, but I figure you’ll appreciate knowing that I _am_ feeling better with someone at my back. He doesn’t look after himself but he sure looks after me.” 

“I do,” Optimus said. “It is good to hear.” Knowing that Jazz was safer was a relief. The relief overtook the guilt that he couldn’t be out there keeping his friend safe. There was more than the two of them now. He could vent a little easier.

The sound of engines came out of nowhere. Multiple. Jazz was on his pedes in an instant, grabbing Optimus and sprinting for the door to get inside as quickly as possible, but before they could wrench it open, a blur collided into them with a sickening crunch they were sent sprawling. Optimus flipped over with a blind swing of his laser-knife and it sheared open the throat of a half-dead seeker that was kneeling over him. Dark energon spewed all over his face, hissing as it made contact with the rain. It didn’t stop moving; he might as well not have hurt it at all. He caught its claw that came plunging towards his helm and sunk his next thrust into its spark-chamber, the laser of the knife splitting its metal easily. 

Its body went limp and he shoved it aside, only to see another seeker who’d been heading for Jazz turn to him with an expression he could only describe as utmost fury. Optimus tried to dodge, roll out of the way, and his legs screamed in pain as he tumbled to the side and then found himself shoved onto his back by the seeker. The two of them skidded across the rooftop. He pinned its arm — it only had one — with a hand and the other used the knife to open it up from chest to groin. There was an unpleasant shriek of metal and through its resistance he kept digging in the knife. It split down the middle, spark guttering, and as it fell slack Optimus only allowed himself a moment of shock to realise that he had killed two mechs. He had never killed anything before, and they looked so similar. Primus, they could’ve been, might’ve been, spark twins, and he’d killed them. Stunned, he looked to where Jazz was fighting off more seekers. 

He was a blur of movement, blowing apart frames, coated in bits of other mechs. Optimus had never seen Jazz in motion up close like this before, and he was a terror to behold, shoving his blaster into the chest of the last mech and shooting its spark apart.

He stood there venting heavily after they had all fallen, dark energon washing off him with the rain, before he hurried over to Optimus. 

“Did any get onto your legs?” he asked.

Optimus shook his helm. The dark energon had splattered all over his helm and his torso, and he tilted them to let the solvent wash it off. Jazz lifted his legs, afraid that any wayward drop would infect Optimus’ exposed energon lines there. 

“We need to wrap you up,” he said. “With anything. Old metal. Scrap. Frag. Why did I never do that earlier? Might go wrong with the rust coming in, but we seriously can’t do without it.”

“I’ve never killed before,” Optimus said numbly. 

“Good time to start.” Jazz hauled him indoors, through the door, back into the corridors where the rain was mostly muffled. “See what I mean about flight frames and thin metal? Easy pickings. They’re already mostly dead. Nothing like if you ran into Megatron. Frag. Good thing he can’t fly. But if we ran into something like Soundwave. That knife of yours? Jammed in him. My shots? Off like solvent. Us? Dead.”

Optimus couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t shaken either. 

“It seems we weren’t the only ones to realise the rain would obscure the sound of engines,” he rumbled, instead. 

“Frag,” was all Jazz responded with, and set him down in the storage room where Megatron and Soundwave had recharged. Optimus knew why they had chosen this room now; it had no windows. While that meant no easy escape, it felt safer, having walls on each side. “I’m gonna leave you in here for a couple of kliks and get some metal. Saw a welder out there too. Don’t worry. Stay still. None of us are gonna die.”

As the door slid shut, Optimus felt a jolt of unease, remembering the mechs on the lower floor. Whatever safety he’d felt had been dashed. What if they had invaded into the building by now? What if they were clambering up and down the staircase, searching floor by floor? He’d mentioned them to Jazz, but now he felt that he hadn’t given sufficient warning. 

He sat there in the darkness for a what felt like a long time, but was really only several kliks, worrying until he felt his frame overheat. What if Soundwave and Megatron had met misfortune while outside? What if Megatron could not find Soundwave? What if they were all separated and offlined? His spark pulsed anxiously. He could do nothing. 

But wait, in the darkness.

*

They all returned by nightfall — or what Optimus’ chronometer told him should’ve been nightfall, considering he was both in a dark room and that Unicron had cast Iacon into eternal shadow. 

Jazz was welding a dead mech’s plating to him, the grey of it wrapping around his exposed struts and lines. He was poring over some distant memory, possibly medical, consulting it as he tried to affix the plating in places that would both provide support to his broken legs and shield his lines.

When the door first opened, Optimus’ spark stopped. He thought it would’ve been the hand of a rabid, dead, mech. The memory of him sinking a blade into a spark and snuffing it was still vivid. He’d killed a mech. If he wanted to save his friends, save those still living, he would have to kill more. He couldn’t mire himself on those thoughts. 

But it was merely Megatron and Soundwave, looking exhausted beyond belief. “Had a run-in on the roof, did you?” Megatron asked. Jazz turned around at the sound of his voice, flicking the welder off.

“Yeah. Got out of it fine. But don’t wanna take a risk like that again. Got any medical expertise to help me here?”

Megatron knelt by Jazz, and it was such a surreal sight that Optimus shuttered his optics blankly. They were gesturing at different parts of him, debating between each other. When Optimus’ health was on the line, he supposed they were a bit more united.

Soundwave had busied himself with the box that Jazz had brought in earlier — the one that the two of them had so risked their lives for. He opened it, checked its insides, and then closed it and put it into his subspace. He settled in the corner of the room, completely silently, dispensing cubes.

“Take over this,” Jazz said, dropping the welder into Megatron’s arms and going over to Soundwave. Their interactions had eased a lot more now. Perhaps it’d been from sharing common tasks, protecting common mechs. 

Optimus was torn between focusing on Jazz and where Megatron was carefully lifting his leg and welding the plating there, his red optics concentrated. His touch was gentle, big servos dwarfing the welder almost clumsily. Optimus felt a stupid surge of affection for him. Megatron would try so hard nonetheless. How typical of him, to push the boundaries of what he was capable of and do so with complete confidence. 

Megatron’s optics flickered upwards to Optimus. His lips curled into the slightest smile because he must’ve caught a hint of Optimus’ field, and so Optimus flared it wider, daring. He could almost imagine that they were back in Kaon. The world was not ending, and they were two revolutionaries standing together with a preposterous dream. 

“Hey, sweet,” came Jazz’s voice where he was cooing over the stoic mech. “You did well today, but no more crazy antics, okay? You gotta listen to me, ‘cause I’m your new boss now. Not Megatron.”

“Negatory,” Soundwave said, so quietly that Optimus thought he’d imagined it, but Megatron’s helm snapped to attention abruptly, his frame completely alert and transfixed at the sight of Jazz crouching in front of the once-spy. 

“Good?” Optimus asked him. 

Megatron returned his attention to Optimus’ leg slowly. “More than I could’ve hoped,” he said. Perhaps he hadn’t been expecting Soundwave to actually interact with anyone aside from him. 

When Jazz rejoined them and Optimus’ legs had been replated, they tried to see if he could stand. He couldn’t. But if lifted to standing already, he found that he could hobble around the room. It’d have to do for now.

The four of them settled to refuel together. “We lured them away and lost them on the far edge of East Iacon,” Megatron recounted. “The streets should be clear for a few cycles.”

“Isn’t that close to Iacon Hospital?” Optimus asked.

“It is.” Megatron seemed to ponder what he should divulge. “The hospital still stands, as is. They can deal well with it.”

Optimus felt rekindled hope at that. Other mechs still lived. He saw the glance Jazz shot him. It was something along the lines of knowing bemusement. 

“We might wanna leave soon,” Jazz butted in. “Rain’ll cover Soundwave’s engines. And Optimus told me about those mechs way downstairs.”

“We _have_ gathered enough energon to last a while,” Megatron agreed. They had divided the cubes up into everyone’s subspace, and frankly, Optimus was surprised and suspicious with how many had been divided out to them. Then he remembered that Megatron and Soundwave possibly had been raiding for a much longer time and stockpiling before they had arrive. “We will let Soundwave rest, and leave during the next cycle if the weather holds.”

“Sounds good,” Jazz said, and scooted next to Soundwave, chirring and clicking. He murmured something to Soundwave, something about a _big day tomorrow so get your rest_ and _listen to your new boss._ Soundwave did not respond.

Soundwave was so essential to their survival; Optimus wished Jazz didn’t have to burden himself to look after him. Whether or not Jazz was actually happy to do so was indeterminable as ever.

“Can you tell me more about the hospital?” Optimus asked.

A considering pause. “It has always had heavily barred windows, as hospital do,” Megatron answered. “I expect that’s been the key to its survival so far. I’ve seen lights on in it before — it has its own generators — so there are certainly mechs still inside.”

“Medics?”

“Likely.” He sipped at his cube thoughtfully. “It was futile to try to enter, because even if we weren’t Decepticons, the hospital didn’t seem to be admitting anyone. They have a perimeter set up with snipers in the top floors. Any bot who tries to take a laser cutter or bomb to its doors — and I suspect there have been a few, desperate — are shot. The dead go by, naturally. There’s no need to waste ammunition like that.”

“So they’re a fortress,” Optimus supplied. “It sounds like they can take care of themselves though. It’s good to hear.”

“They have self-preservation. They don’t stay on the lower floors,” Megatron continued, nodding in agreement. “No mech does. There are too many Unicron tainted mechs on the streets that would sense you if you did, and no wall will hold up against their attacks forever.”

“But energon will eventually run out,” Optimus said. “What’s going to happen in the long run?”

“We don’t know.” The rest of the cube was drained down his intake. How could that meagre amount of fuel be enough for his large frame? Megatron turned the empty container around and around in his servos. “We hope that they run out of dark energon before we run out of energon, though that’s a thin hope. They roam more and more up the buildings these days.” He folded it up neatly and deposited it in his subspace. “We are luckier than most, though. That box the two of them found contains the essential components for energon distilleries. If we ever run into an engineer who can assemble it and find a safe place, then we’re free to live.”

“The Core first,” Optimus reminded. While driving out to the rural areas and living alone sounded better than remaining in the skeleton of Iacon, they had a _duty._

“I know.”

They settled into a pensive silence together. Soundwave had already slipped into recharge, Jazz’s arm slung over him. It continually shocked Optimus to see how small Soundwave could compact himself. He was tucked half into Jazz’s lap, his narrow legs slotted under Jazz’s until they were an abstract shape of light and dark colours and edges. Not that he’d not gone there on his own volition; Jazz had bodily placed him there.

“I had this foolish dream,” Megatron admitted, looking over at them. “For him. He was everything I was not, and I knew the Council looked upon me unfavourably. So I thought, perhaps…” He smiled ruefully. “I suppose that’s behind us anyway, isn’t it? Yet another test that the Council failed.”

“That past isn’t important,” Optimus said firmly. Old unease reared its head when he remembered Megatron’s words. Although he’d calmed Megatron’s tumult, at the time Optimus hadn’t actually _fully_ agreed — he had been under the impression, still, that Megatron was somehow still too selfish. He’d reasoned that what Megatron had said was true, his point valid, that the Council’s choice _was_ flawed, but that it did not mean he was automatically deserving of being Prime, nor that Optimus would betray him with the power the title afforded.

But he was rapidly coming to realise that hadn’t actually been Megatron’s argument. When Megatron had exploded in his outburst, it hadn’t been about the fact that he _wasn’t_ Prime, but that Optimus had _accepted_ the Council’s decree even though it was inherently unjust. 

That he had been wrong to accept Primacy. 

It shouldn’t have been for the Council to even decree. Nothing except the Matrix had the right to announce who was Prime, and Optimus- Optimus should have _said_ this. He should have realised this! He felt vulgar, suddenly, strangely vulgar and not-right in his own frame because he had made a grievous mistake.

Before the hearing, they hadn’t discussed at all what would occur. If Megatron’s posturing had all only been posturing, if all the indications that he’d given on the stand about needing a new Prime had really been a test for the Council to see who they would choose…

The revelation had been slow to come, but he felt like he had finally glimpsed it.

Previously, he had drawn strength from the thought that he had been chosen as Prime, but he decided that he could do so no longer. Only the Matrix would decide — if they lived long enough to ever see it — who was deserving of the title that was now redundant. From now on, his conviction would be from his spark alone. It would be conviction borne from faith in his friends, faith in Megatron, faith in himself and faith in Cybertron to survive. _That_ was what was important to him now. 

“Do you suppose you should call me Orion again?” Optimus asked. It was a silent acknowledgement that Optimus finally agreeing to Megatron’s words. 

The reply was something of an embittered laugh. “I imagine that if we meet any live mechs, the title of Prime will be useful to tote around. Moreover, I’ve already reconciled the thought of you as that of _Optimus_. As unpleasant as the reminder may be, objectively… it is a fitting name. Worthy. It suits you.”

Something warm blossomed in his chest. Optimus burst into a smile. Megatron looked away uncomfortably. 

Jazz made a noise suspiciously between a cough and a laugh. 

“We should recharge,” Megatron said. “Though, Optimus, I have a favour to ask of you.”

He came closer and fitted Optimus into his arms again. Optimus could see Jazz leering — which, really, was quite hypocritical, given Soundwave. But they were different circumstances, Jazz providing and emotionally ruined mech comfort, Optimus… doing it for his own comfort, and Megatron’s.

“I want you to stay on watch tonight.”

Megatron had lost any hint of embarrassment or playfulness. Optimus nodded just as gravely. He understood the importance of the task. Previously, when it had been only the two of them, they had recharged sporadically and in shifts.

“We both saw the blockade. _They_ saw us, too. Call me paranoid, but I don’t wish to take chances. Typically I would do this myself, but the three of us are in dire need of recharge, therefore I must request this task of you.” He carried Optimus to the door, opening it into the eerie darkness of the corridor.

“I am a heavy sleeper,” he admitted. “Your friend Jazz has taken his place at Soundwave’s side. I wouldn’t want to move him now to be closer if you need to signal. But most importantly, I don’t want you to need to _call_ and attract attention if something does come, or have to crawl into the storeroom.”

He settled down, in the corridor, Optimus still in his arms. “Therefore I will recharge here,” he said. “But do not wake me with pain; I will react unfavourably.”

“I understand,” Optimus said. Megatron’s warmth surrounded him on all sides, and his optics shuttered quietly. 

He had to admit, he’d felt a flicker of apprehension at being out in the corridor alone when Megatron had first told him he would be on watch, but with Megatron there, a cradle of warmth and solidarity, he was relieved. 

“Optimus,” Megatron murmured suddenly. Optimus’ audials flipped up to attention. “Your legs–” 

“I know,” he said, and Megatron fell silent. His field thrummed with an underlying unease, though Optimus couldn’t tell if it was for him or their group in particular. 

Your legs are going to kill you. Soon. When he was welding the metal he would’ve taken a closer look at where the rust was eating up Optimus’ limbs. Even though Optimus had offlined all energon flow and synapses to them, cutting off all feeling from the pain, the rust was advancing and the metal there was dying completely.

Optimus found himself hard-pressed to worry. Their demises were practically inevitable; it would do no good to dwell upon them. They would go to the Core, and from there on their future was shrouded. If they could cleanse away Unicron’s taint, if they could do _anything_ , it would be worth it. If they could not-if the entirety of Cybertron was gone-

There was not much to live for, either way. Optimus did not think he wanted a life that was only filled with running and fear. 

Staying awake was not difficult. It was the least he could do for these mechs that had risked their lives for him. The kliks passed in silence, Megatron’s engine no more than a thrum bracketing him. Jazz and Soundwave were completely soundless even though the door to the storeroom was open. 

The kliks passed into joors. Optimus was ever-vigilant, optics open and staring up and down the corridor. There were stairwell doors on both sides. Two entrances. He found his gaze sliding to the windows often, too, suspicious that mechs could crawl in through them, slithering like liquid. Rain pittered through them and hinted of movement.

Jazz had previously moved all the corpses into other rooms so the corridor itself was clear. Optimus let himself feel a small amount of comfort at that, but still, he was tense. What if one of the corpses hadn’t been fully offlined and began moving again?

Joors slid into breems. Megatron was well and truly into recharge. He occasionally made small movements and noises, much to Optimus’ consternation. He nearly leapt out of his frame the first time Megatron’s vocaliser spat static above him. Spark pounding in its casing, he rested a servo across Megatron’s chest as though wordlessly imploring him to stay quiet. 

The stillness of the corridor was ominous. A long tunnel of blackness. The rain might as well have been silent. Optimus felt his plating prickle. There was a sense of being- watched.

Megatron’s servos shifted around him, tucking him in tighter. Something like a whimper escaped his throat. 

Optimus felt his own tighten. Megatron must’ve known that his recharge was plagued with nightmares, yet still he chose to be here — because putting Jazz here would’ve disturbed Soundwave, who they so desperately needed and who Megatron was desperately trying to help, and because he did not want Optimus to be alone. 

He tucked one of his servos into Megatron’s, squeezed. Megatron did not wake, though he stirred uneasily beneath Optimus. 

The _bang_ from the other end of the corridor was like a gunshot in the silence. 

Optimus’ hands were on Megatron’s face immediately — instinct telling him that the other places on Megatron’s body were too thick with plating to feel the touch well. “Megatron,” he whispered urgently. “Megatron.” His field flared wide in alarm.

Maybe he’d hallucinated it. He didn’t think so, even though the corridor had fallen still again. Nothing had changed from when he looked at it last. The shadows of rain were the only things moving.

“Megatron,” Optimus said desperately, cupping his face, trying to _will_ him into wakefulness. Megatron huffed, but remained still in recharge. Optimus straightened and put his lips right beside Megatron’s audials that were hidden by his helm. “ _Megatron_ ,” he hissed.

The _bang_ came again. It dispelled any lingering doubts that it was a hallucination. Optimus had been watching the door this time and saw it distend inwards with the force of something on the other side. His servos patting over Megatron’s frame grew in urgency. “Wake up,” he said, “wake up.” He couldn’t pinch his lines or anything that would cause pain, but he needed something alarming.

In his hurriedness, a thumb slipped against Megatron’s lips — softer than he’d expected — and pressed. It sunk into the warm wetness there and Megatron’s optics snapped open in a pale bleached red, his entire frame freezing completely still, field pulled in with something Optimus recognised as terror.

Whatever reaction would cause Megatron to behave like that, Optimus would worry about later, but he had his suspicions.

_Bang!_ came again, and Megatron was on his pedes in an instant, optics flaring their usual red, lifting Optimus and bursting into the storage room.

“We need to leave,” he said to the two recharging mechs there. Jazz’s visor flashed into alertness. “ _Hurry._ ”

Within instants all four of them were in the corridor, pedes much too loud as they fled towards the opposite stairwell door, the one that was still. The one that was not shaking with a thumping that was continuous now. Whatever was behind them, Optimus dreaded finding out. _Bang- bang bang-_ like a war-drum hit by many hands.

One of Megatron’s arms had transformed into its familiar fusion cannon, heating up against Optimus, and Optimus transformed his cannons too. There was no time for any hesitation. Optimus would _not_ be any more of a liability as he was now. 

Megatron kicked open the door and they were faced immediately with a snarling dark-eyed mech whose chest exploded when a shot from Optimus’ own ion cannon blasted through it.

More mechs were tumbling out from behind the door — and Optimus had a brief belated moment to realise that it had been a _trap_. _Both_ stairwells on either end were filled with mechs. Teeth snapped close enough to Optimus’ face that he felt the heat of a mad mech’s breath.

The four of them were pulling back, Optimus being shifted onto one arm, the huge tidal swarm of mechs spilling into a corridor. Megatron stopped moving and tossed Optimus behind him and Optimus stared up from his place on the ground, saw Jazz and Soundwave facing the other way and shooting where the other door had finally given under the strain and there were more mechs spilling in through. Saw Megatron plant his feet shoulder-width apart, centre his gravity, brace, and then _fire_. The blast lit up the every wall and surface and Optimus could feel its crackling heat from where he lay, his own ion cannon outstretched. It incinerated the whole half of the corridor, a huge roar of light shining, ripping off every atomic layer of the mechs caught inside.

“ _Soundwave_!” Megatron bellowed, and in a black streak Soundwave leapt out the now-gaping hole in the building. Optimus was swept up and saw the walls passing by, saw lolling faces with rolling optics behind them, and they plunged out into the unknown. With a shudder they were caught in Soundwave’s cock-pit midair and then they shot into the sky. 

Rain drummed against the metal surrounding them like a falling curtain. 

“I’m sorry I woke you like that,” Optimus said, still held by Megatron as though he were a lifeline. The sudden stillness of the inside of Soundwave’s cockpit was surreal. 

“It was warranted,” he replied. 

The three of them were crammed together quite tightly. And he knew that they must’ve been _heavy_. He couldn’t tell from inside, but thought that Soundwave must’ve been straining his systems as they flew.

Optimus just prayed that they could escape Iacon, where the majority of mechs were. Once they were on the long stretches of highway towards the Well, it would be far easier. Surely there were fewer mechs out there.

The Well wasn’t even so far away from Iacon, but it seemed that merely going to building to building, down a street, was fraught with danger.

“You did well,” Megatron said, placing a servo on his wrist. Whether it was for fighting or for keeping vigilant watch was obscure.

“I’m so sorry,” Optimus said, meaning Megatron’s nightmares, and rested his helm against Megatron’s chest. He shouldn’t have witnessed them. Optimus had no nightmares of his own — and he’d felt as though he’d seen some part of Megatron bared. Some part that in any other world he wouldn’t have seen because it was too private and personal to be shared. 

Safety did not last for long. 

The three of them tumbled together as Soundwave spun abruptly. Whatever was happening outside was unknown to them, but the jet was shaking with wild turbulence. When it became apparent that they were losing altitude, tipping forwards, but that Soundwave was going to keep them inside so that he’d bear the brunt of the damage, Jazz slammed a hand into one of his walls. 

“Listen to me!” he barked, and Optimus had _never_ heard him sound like that before, so commanding and confident and utterly demandingly authoritative. For a mad second he could imagine _Jazz_ as a Prime. Not him nor Megatron. “You’re going to transform because _I order it._ _Now_!”

Air rushed in a vortex and they were falling. Jazz grabbed onto one of Soundwave’s swinging plates — energon was raining from him, shots having pierced his wing — and with the momentum he curved towards the sheer face of a building where the magnets in his thrusters activated and fired and carried Soundwave with him.

Optimus was reminded of being thrown by the shockwave with the way the raining world was spinning by in a horrific blur, buildings and a crowd of mechs below. Something slammed into him, Megatron enveloping him in his now-familiar warmth as they crashed into a building, tore through walls and down through the floors. But there was an explosion below and the building began to _fall_ and they were again hurtling towards the streets. Screeching filled his audials on all sides. Darkness surrounded like a stifling maw until suddenly space spread around him and unfamiliar walls took their places, monitors and warheads and buttons and screens that did not work.

Megatron had transformed. The inside of Megatron, the tank, was steady regardless of what turmoil was outside, though Optimus felt the impact when they hit the ground. He scrambled into the one seat inside, to its slits of thick glass, desperate to see outside. Faces of snarling mechs greeted him. They were all over Megatron, clawing at his plating to try to get inside to Optimus, but it was too strong to be pierced. He rode through them with surprising speed, and although Optimus could hear nothing of the outside, he could imagine the crunch as mechs were crushed beneath. 

Optimus had never been more grateful that Iacon was mostly filled with mechs like him, data-clerks, racers, bright and delicate mechs not built like Megatron. 

Where they were heading, Optimus had no idea. Megatron powered on with all the inexorability of the tank he was until Optimus could no longer see out the glass because there was only a mass of bodies. He spread his servos across Megatron’s monitors, imagining he could hear the thunderous beat of Megatron’s spark, willing it to go on.

He had hardly noticed that some mechanism behind him had loaded one of the warheads itself until it _fired_. The vibration could be felt through Megatron’s frame even inside, the barrel recoiling as bright light burst through the slits of glass and he saw bodies flying like dolls. Megatron suddenly began treading faster, another warhead was pulled up, and Optimus hurried to aid, ducking into its barrel-head to load. 

Something was making Megatron shake violently. Another explosion rocked the outside. Then Optimus was exposed to the night air and buildings and a stifling darkness filled with moving limbs rose around him. Megatron was clutching him as his mass folded away and he hit the ground while his fusion cannon caught a swath of mechs and burnt them to ash. Optimus transformed his own ion cannons, shooting over Megatron’s shoulders as they ran in an unsteady gait down the street because Megatron was limping. There was a still-moving bot _arm_ crammed in one of his joints, between the hydraulics, bending them. Optimus grabbed it to try to haul it free because Megatron’s own arms were too occupied, shooting, carrying him. 

Optimus sent commands for his plating to _move_ and they did, interlocking with Megatron’s chest plates, freeing him to shoot — Optimus hanging on by their plating alone, his fingers tightening around the stubborn arm. He wrenched it out with a howl of pure desperation, and it clattered away but was replaced immediately with more hands, grabbing for Megatron, pulling him back. Tripping him. As soon as he went down they were overwhelmed.

Megatron curled over him in attempt to protect Optimus with his body as they hit the ground. Optimus’ breath was knocked out in a burst of pain. His side clanged against the concrete of the street, and within instants Megatron’s arms were bracketing him, his ventilations loud in his audials, everything dark except for fierce glow of his optics. Things, fingers, were squirming between the gaps of his arms, trying to reach for the easier meat that they knew lay beneath Megatron because they could not pierce the armour of the bigger mech. 

Something hit Megatron hard enough for him to cry out in pain, wetness splattering over Optimus’ face. Megatron’s optics shut tight and there was the faintest glisten of something dripping from between his clenched dentae. Blunt trauma, Optimus prayed. Please let it just be internal damage from blunt trauma. Nothing more. 

Megatron’s optics opened again, unfocused with pain, and the flow of liquid felt like it burnt against him. Megatron’s life draining away as Optimus lay beneath and spilling all over his frame.

The noise was unending, like a tidal wave of so many bodies Optimus couldn’t even imagine, snarling against the pound of Megatron’s plating being struck over and over.

He wouldn’t be able to hold on forever. He would be torn apart and the last thing he would’ve done was save Optimus. 

He grabbed Megatron’s helm and lurched upwards and kissed him, the tang of energon strangely hot and heavy and swirling between them, and Megatron returned his kiss just as hungrily and blindly, his fangs nicking Optimus’ lips in reminder that they were still fragging alive, in all this mess, still kicking. 

Optimus kissed him wildly and desperately and just wished that he’d done so sooner.Where he’d exposed his helm just to kiss Megatron he felt fingers of dead mechs closing around him, going to tear apart his processor. He found that it was a regretless way to die. 

The sound of gunfire cracking the air was unmistakable. Loud shots that were unfamiliar volleyed one after another and suddenly the darkness flooded away. The thrashing movement squeezing for Optimus was gone. Megatron stilled, and slowly, parting from Optimus, disbelievingly, looked up. 

Optimus tipped his helm back and saw a light as bright as the sun. A floodlight shone down on them like an all-seeing eye, and a voice bellowed, “ _Stop staring and get in here, idiots!_ ”

He was hauled up in moments, Megatron staggering forwards, wiping at all the dark energon from mechs that’d splattered over them and their faces, surprisingly no trace of purple, and then Optimus realised in greater numb shock that they were standing in front of Iacon Hospital and that its doors were open. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if KZ win MSI today, i'm uploading the next chapter after the match


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's 2AM. KZ lost. but the truth is that i'm uploading anyway because i must drown my sadness with these poor characters' miseries arrrghghhh

 

The medics of the hospital weren’t happy. Optimus had been helped by a surly one up a few twenty flights of stairs, onto the upper floors, and was practically clinging to a railing by the walls to remain upright as a group of _live_ mechs debated amongst themselves. In a great turnaround of the usual, Megatron was leaning on his shoulders and his optics were flickering woozily. 

Somehow, Soundwave and Jazz were there too, calmly in the other corner of the room. Jazz seemed to be cradling Soundwave’s injuries, round neat holes where he’d been shot. 

Daringly, Optimus shifted some of his weight onto his legs to leg go of one servo and use it to stroke Megatron’s helm instead, cupping the curve of his jaw and spreading his fingers over his cheeks, brushing a thumb along the slanted contours of his face. Megatron’s optics shuttered back at him in confusion. He really was out of it. It was almost endearing.

The only medical things the medics had done was briefly check whether or not Megatron had any open wounds — they said that they would not let an infected mech in, no matter what — so Optimus could breathe freely knowing that Megatron was not on the brink of death. 

“–can’t let interlopers in. We _promised_!”

“You owe me,” Jazz said, through the din. One of the medics whirled around to face him.

“ _Ratchet_ owes you, and owing something from before means _nothing_ , so before you think that means we’ll take you in–“

“And he’s now your head medic,” Jazz said pleasantly, “so you might want to zip that pretty little mouth of yours before it sounds like you’re over-stepping, right?”

The last thing they needed to do was antagonise their hosts, though if Jazz was truly what had gotten them there in the first place, Optimus had no place to complain. 

Still, even if he did not deserve Primehood, even just as a mech wishing for peace, he had to attempt to cut through this chaos. 

“We do not wish to intrude,” he said, and his low and calm timbre was enough for a few of the medics to look warily at him. “We have our own energon storages, and we do not wish to stay indefinitely. Merely to recuperate. We will not drain your resources.”

“Lotta bots are gonna be wanting in, now. You weren’t subtle.”

A sudden harsh mechanical tone cut through them. “Where are you getting energon?” The recording was unfamiliar, though its amplitudes danced across Soundwave’s visor. The box was brought out from his subspace.

“Like we’re gonna tell you,” one of the medics said.

Jazz caught on immediately. “We got something you might like, and that we might not need ourselves, ‘cause we’re probably not going to live that long. T-N-spacers, wafers, MOSFET — you name it. All the perfect little bits in this box.” He tapped its lid and his smile turned knowing. “And I know I saw an engineer coming in here. So what’s it gonna be? A few cycles of rest for your box of holy grail?”

“Accepted,” a new voice said. 

“Ratchet–“

“Oh, buckle it. I’m just glad Jazz didn’t _kill_ anyone coming in.”

Jazz grinned broadly. Optimus let himself relax, finally, and the medics swarmed around them. They were led away out the room, and he saw a small bot open the box and half-squeal in delight and then turn to start yabbering away at the bigger white and red mech, Ratchet. 

“We’ll just take one room,” Jazz said, and the unfamiliar medic leading them rolled his optics. Optimus couldn’t stop looking around. Most of the hallways weren’t lit, but he didn’t think he’d see a place so clearly _lived in_ again. He could hear the pedes of other medics strolling around, the murmurs of conversation, and dim lights seeping under closed doors. 

“Whatever you want. Housekeeping rules: don’t leave the building. Don’t break into any locked doors. Don’t break into any locked floors. Don’t get into any arguments. Don’t draw any weapons. Don’t take anything. And when you’re better, you leave. We can do some minor repairs for you, but nothing as big as–“ he nodded at Optimus’ legs, who he was supporting “-that.”

“We’ll see,” Jazz said breezily. “I’ll talk to Ratchet. Where does he stay?”

The mech seemed reluctant to divulge. “Thirty two, last door.”

Jazz just hummed. “You’re working on a cure here, aren’t you?”

“We’re medics,” the mech shot back. “Of course we are. Stop nosing. Don’t go onto the lower floors.”

“Just checking.” A door slid open for them, filled with four medical berths. There wasn’t any electricity, but it was already better than Optimus had been expecting. The windows, as ever, were shattered, but their re-enforced bars still held. The glass had been swept up. A gentle breeze stirred privacy curtain between each berth.

Optimus could feel relief dawning in his very spark. _Safety_. He couldn’t believe it. It felt like forever since he had seen a room, an actual undamaged room, and knew that he could rest in it without fear. 

The mech behind them had left. Soundwave helped Megatron onto one of the berths; Jazz took Optimus to another. 

“Told you I knew a mech here,” he said, as he laid Optimus back and Optimus let tension ease away from him until he was practically strutless. A _berth._ It was so alien after recharging on cold floors every cycle.

“I hardly remembered,” Optimus admitted.

“Didn’t think he’d become the best one they still had. Should’ve expected it, though.”

“How’d you get here? How’d you even manage to _talk_ to them?”

“I have my ways,” Jazz said off-handedly. As usual. “But if some of the medics around here don’t trust me and Sounders, might be because I flash-banged them and shoved my blaster through the bars. Or ‘cause Soundwave knocked out their snipers. Those tentacles of his, Optimus. M _hmm_ , you wouldn’t _believe._ ”

“Jazz, please,” Optimus said, feeling a processor ache come on. They were data cables, not tentacles, for one.

“Hey, worked, didn’t it?” 

“It did.” And he could feel grateful at that. The processor ache lessened. “Thank you, Jazz.” He hoped he could convey the absolute sincerity with which he said it. He wouldn’t have even lived past the first cycle without Jazz. He wouldn’t have found Megatron without Jazz. Jazz was irreplaceable.

“Nah, nah,” Jazz said. “The thanks goes to you. You know I would’ve gone mad if I’d been alone at the start, right? And even after that, Megatron would’ve blasted my helm off if you weren’t with me.”

“You saved everybody,” Optimus said.

“So did you. Look, we all did. So take some time out to rest, yeah? We’re not gonna get a lot of it, because we’re still heading to the Core.”

Optimus had, briefly, been struck with the doubt that perhaps some of them — especially Jazz, who was never as prone to heroics — would’ve wanted to stay behind, to give up their journey to the Core. To hear that he was still determined to see it through brought another layer of lightness to his spark. They were still a united front. 

Jazz slipped away from his berthside to speak to Soundwave, ducking his helm and lowering his voice. Soundwave didn’t seem to respond. At some point he inspected Soundwave’s wounds critically, Soundwave pliant underneath him, letting Jazz manoeuvre and scrutinise him as he wanted. He reminded Optimus unerringly of a drone sometimes. Where was his spark?

Snuffed, Optimus remembered, and had to look away. 

Surely he was improving, though, coming out of his grief, slowly finding himself again. He had spoken up on his own volition in front of the medics, hadn’t he? 

Across the span between their berths Megatron had come back online, or maybe he hadn’t fallen offline at all. Either way, he seemed much more aware when he met Optimus’ optics. Then the red pair shuttered. Blankly. As though unsure what to think. Perhaps in memory of their kiss.

Optimus found himself easing out of his berth, bracing himself against the wall to hobble closer. He could feel Jazz’s gaze on his back. But he made it to Megatron’s side with little incident. “Hey,” he said, his smile audible. “Come here often?”

“Such vernacular is unbecoming.” Megatron vented loudly.

“Of what, a Prime?”

Megatron’s optics flared for a moment with old resentment, then dulled down. Optimus immediately regretted what he’d said, intending it to be teasing by referencing something they’d agreed upon rather than insulting, but before he could apologise, Megatron said, “Of my Conjunx Endura.”

He might as well have hit Optimus. His intake went completely dry. “What?” 

“I jest,” Megatron said, and now he could tell that the slagger was smiling. “Come here.”

Optimus’ optic ridges shot up, though his spark was still pulsing rapidly from the last scare. “Into your berth? Now _that’s_ unbecoming.”

Megatron seemed to consider tugging Optimus in by his arm, but the potential of pain — for both of them, Megatron’s battered internals and Optimus’ unsteady place by his berth — was not worth it. “Yes, into my berth. Unless you wish to stand there until your legs crumple. Haven’t we just fumbled up an immeasurably long staircase?”

Optimus sat on its edge and tugged his legs after him, wincing slightly, and Megatron drew him closer. 

They spoke of nothing, merely sat together and relished in each others warmth. The door opened at some point and a medic came in to take Soundwave to one of the med-rooms with equipment to patch him up. Optimus watched him go, but trusted the medics in the building. He tucked his helm beside Megatron’s, thinking about the last time he’d been able to share such casual intimacy with another mech. It was a lifetime ago. Hardly worth remembering. Megatron was here and warm and alive. That in itself was a miracle. 

“I have a question for you,” Jazz said from across the room, tone flat, “because you can’t think I didn’t notice. But Soundwave never shoots to kill, does he?”

Optimus stared over at Jazz, then tilted his helm questioningly against Megatron’s. Was it true? How hadn’t he noticed? He hadn’t seen Soundwave in combat often, he realised. The seeker’s death had been unavoidable, and as for their escape– had he only been shooting for non-vital components? If he did, Optimus hadn’t realised in the chaos of things. 

“He’s a gladiator. Of course he’s killed before.”

Jazz’s plating flared. “If you’re trying to dodge the question in some stupid impression that I’ll disapprove of him ‘cause of the answer, you’re really more thick than I thought.”

“Jazz,” Optimus warned. Why could these two never settle anything civilly? A underlying discomfort rose at Jazz’s prickliness. He’d never been so quick to incite. Jazz wore, he realised, a very good mask of ease around all of them. Was it starting to crack?

“No, Optimus, he’s right,” Megatron relented. Surprise rippled through Optimus. “Others have not reacted so favourably in the past to Soundwave’s… choice. He does not shoot to kill afflicted mechs. No amount of urging will make him do it.”

“He nearly _died_ for it. Several times. Would’ve, if I hadn’t been there.” Jazz’s fists clenched, and then whirled around to stare out the barred window, visor flashing bright. It struck Optimus suddenly how _taxing_ it was for Jazz to actually try and try to pry at Soundwave to find any semblance of will to live again. On top of it all, he was nearly always out on the streets, battered with the stress of destruction and fear and trying to stay alive. Jazz was starting to _break_. “You know on that first day we met? There was one right on top of him. Big guy. And all Sounders tries to do is pop off his knee and shove him away and those teeth were _this_ close to chomping open his neck before I came in. We don’t _have_ that luxury. Primus, how stupid would it be to die just for that?”

Optimus watched, distressed, knowing that he had no remedy for the situation, neither for Soundwave’s broken spark not for Jazz’s mounting frustration at feeling— ineffectual. Stressed. Worn out and worn down. Optimus wished that he’d take his own advice and rest too while they were at the hospital. 

But then Megatron spoke. “When we saw the shockwave approaching, a wall of destruction on the horizon—” he sounded like he was speaking from somewhere very far away, detached from the room they were in, some other place, “—all we could do was brace. I couldn’t see for the ringing in my helm after it hit. Glass shards and flight frames fell from the sky in grotesque rain. I caught one almost accidentally, but his back split and his internals flooded out over my pedes. And then I looked up to see Soundwave, as energon-splattered as I, clinging to five lifeless bodies. The pressure had combusted them internally _through_ his arms even as he had been holding them.”

His laugh bordered on unhinged. “The better question would be how anyone expects him to function at all. Five little mechs he’d sworn to protect. And to crown it all, he couldn’t even _keep_ them. Shockwave put together a very convincing case for him to follow on an energon raid, and when we returned, the tower we’d been staying in, where they’d been left, had fallen.

“If you’ve seen West Iacon you’ll know that there’s nothing there. We were forced to drag him away and he fought us with every step, convinced they were there still, somewhere, buried beneath the buildings. But there’s nothing. What remains of his family and West Iacon are ruins and bodies that move.”

Megatron made this noise again, which was probably meant to be a laugh didn’t sound like one, more of a burst of exhale than anything, and his voice poised on the edge of something terrible. “Sometimes I suspect we never did take him away,” he said. “He’s still there. Picking through the rubble. Looking for the dead.”

Then he shut his optics and vented out, as though something had been let go, some secretive curse, and said nothing more for a long time.

By the window, Jazz gripped the bars and remained tumultuously silent.

*

With little fanfare, Optimus’ legs were fixed. 

He knew that Jazz had slipped out and spoken to Ratchet, had somehow bargained for their medical care, and remained absent for long stints in the day. He suspected that Jazz had been hired into helping the hospital raid for materials for the energon distilleries or otherwise similar missions. Optimus hadn’t asked yet. In all honesty, he worried for Jazz. It was almost as though Soundwave’s self-destructive, self-sacrificing habits had passed over onto him. Whatever hopes he’d had of Jazz pausing to take a rest were dashed entirely. When Jazz returned, Optimus would ask to take his place in the raids instead.

Whether or not he took Soundwave with him — though it seemed unlikely — was unclear, because Soundwave disappeared for cycles at a time too. This, at least, was what Megatron told him, because Optimus was constrained to the operating room.

Being able to walk, to run, to be mobile again, was worth any inactivity when he was finally released. They were foreign in their functionality and Optimus found himself striding up and down the halls simply for the sake of moving. 

He had been told that Megatron was in recharge and recently moved to be put on some medical-grade drips (that they’d traded for with their own reserves of energon) so Optimus wasn’t to go looking for him. Jazz’s location, as well as Soundwave’s, as ever, were a mystery. The corridors were his to explore alone.

The medics, marked by their chevrons, were always hurrying past alongside engineers and scientists, deep in talk or thought, and their fighters — snipers, enforcers, — guarded them fervently. 

Optimus had never been in such a high-grade hospital. As a data-clerk, he hadn’t met with much injury in his life, so he hadn’t been to many hospitals in the first place. There was a sterile feel to it, something that was missing from the streets now, reminiscent of the times before the disaster. Optimus thought that any mech living in here would’ve been very lucky. It was like holding onto a piece of the past. 

It was down one such corridor that he was startled to attention by a door sliding open and a mech, white and red, stepping through, the chevron crowned on his helm. Optimus recognised him as Ratchet. 

“Excuse me,” Optimus said, deciding that if he was open, he would make for informative company.

Ratchet looked up, slowing in his stride. “Yes,” he said, optics shuttering.

“Do you have time to talk?” 

The medic rolled his shoulders and his helm, working out the kinks that must’ve gathering during his day. “Well, I’m off to recharge now, and I’ve just seen my last patient — your friend in there, not that he needed much and it’s not like he _insisted on doing it himself anyway_ — so this is as good a time as any. Talk away, Optimus Prime.” So he did recognise him. Optimus had been wondering if the medics did, because no one had mentioned it. The hearing, at the time, had been live-streamed and gathered global attention.

“Just Optimus is fine,” Optimus said. 

“Prime not for you?” Ratchet wasn’t hard to read. There was an undertone of skepticism in his words. He must’ve thought that Optimus rejected the responsibility as soon as hard times were upon them. 

“I relinquished it for Megatron,” Optimus admitted. “He told me that the Council had no right to name me Prime, and I agreed.”

“Megatron.” Ratchet tested the name on his glossa, weighing it, disapproval still heavy. “You know that I had to operate on him because no other medic wanted to.”

No, Optimus hadn’t, but it was useful to know. This meant three of their four had antagonised the medics. “He’s not like that,” Optimus said. He’d seen some of Megatron’s first speeches, seen Megatron in his dreadful home in Kaon, seen Megatron in his devastation, seen Megatron in his pained recharge. He liked to think that — perhaps aside from Soundwave — he was one of the mechs who had witnessed the most sides of Megatron. 

“Guess not,” Ratchet said. “I saw him out there, shielding you with everything. That’s hard to reconcile with some of the slag I’ve heard about him.” A white servo came up to rub at his helm in exasperation. “And it’s one of the worst ways to go, getting peeled apart like that. If they’re hungry they eat you down. If they’re not, they just turn you into one of them.”

Optimus didn’t want too talk much about Megatron. He doubted that Ratchet would take his word about Megatron with too much weight, having witnessed their budding relationship. And, on top of that, Optimus was here to learn rather than divulge. 

“Can you tell me about the hospital?” he asked, as they entered the stairwell. Ratchet spoke of the darkened mechs with the familiarity of experience. Perhaps he knew something they didn’t. “How did you gather?”

There was a brief hesitation, and then, “We were just in here when it went off,” Ratchet said. “It blew half the equipment and staff to hell, but not to death. We’re lucky we had a work crew in that day to check on some of the new rooms, and they fixed things up for us to fix each _other_ up. We were open at the start, pulling mech off the street, and then the energon came in.” He huffed at the memory. “‘Course it seemed _wrong_ , and it’s not like equipment will work if it’s submerged. So we all moved up. It turned dark. Then when it drained, we saw hell outside. It was hell inside for a while, too.”

Ratchet seemed like a gruff medic through and through, vowed to help and save lives no matter what. Optimus had been wondering– “Is that why you closed the doors?”

Ratchet shut his optics then, pained. It had been a difficult choice. It must’ve been. “There was no end to mech coming in,” he said. “We couldn’t stay open.”

“I understand,” Optimus said gently.

“Do you?” Ratchet asked, optics opening again. “Because it was a choice between killing some mechs or killing more, and maybe all even for nothing. They came in with their loved ones and friends, and then they hid injuries that were infected because they thought for some reason _their_ mech would be the one that wouldn’t turn. But they’d wake up snapping on the table and that’s how we lost some of our best.”

Optimus remained silent, unwilling to intrude.

“So we said no,” Ratchet said shortly. “Enforcers came to our aid. We couldn’t keep giving out our energon stores. We couldn’t keep losing our medics because then we’d _have_ no more to lose. We closed the doors and they started rioting, but they didn’t last for long. If you’re noisy you attract attention of the dead kind, and if you’re rioting to get let in, you have someone heavily injured and probably about to turn.”

Ratchet ex-vented heavily. No doubt that this was an old nightmare, one that was shared with all the mechs in the hospital. “So that’s our haven, though I know you probably knew half of it already anyway. That’s our haven with the bloodiest doorsteps of any hospital in Cybertron.”

“You’re working for a cure,” Optimus said. “You are still good mechs. I won’t believe otherwise.”

“If we don’t, it was all for nothing,” Ratchet said. “I had _friends_ that turned up on those doorsteps and I sure as hell wasn’t the only one who had. We turned them all down because we couldn’t just let some in and not others. Where would the line be drawn then? We chose who lived and died? Some mechs just _got lucky_ because they knew us before? We couldn’t do that— _I_ couldn’t do that. So we kept them out and I effectively sentenced all my friends to death, Optimus. Even when they were begging me. There’s not much a mech has left after he does that. He works to find a cure otherwise he’ll go mad.”

Optimus processed it, and then–

With a great clatter he dropped to his knees on the next landing, his forehead following and touching the ground. It was a kneeling bow, one of the deepest signs of respect he could still give, and he held the pose as he heard Ratchet spluttering above him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Thank you, Ratchet,” Optimus said. “You broke your promise and brought great guilt on yourself, but you _saved my life_. You saved the lives of my friends. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Get up, get up,” Ratchet said, urging him back to standing, looking up and down the stairwell as if to check if anyone had seen. “You— It wasn’t out of a _kind_ _spark_ , you aft. If I didn’t, Jazz and that dark terror of his would’ve _killed_ everyone here! I don’t know what he told you, but he burst into my room with a _knife_ at Triage’s throat snarling for me to let you in.”

“He wouldn’t have,” Optimus said. “It was just a desperate threat. He’s a cultural investigator.” 

“If you think he’s just that, I don’t think you know him that well.” Ratchet ex-vented loudly, again. “If you don’t… better for you, honestly. Fragging hell. How does someone like you get mixed up with those three?”

Optimus stared at him, unfazed. “We share goals.”

“They’re gonna pull and push you around,” Ratchet said. “Megatron already convinced you into dropping Prime. What next?”

“We go to the Core, into the Well,” Optimus said softly, “and then it doesn’t matter who’s what anymore.”

Ratchet’s in-vent was sharp, surprised. “I get it,” he said, and laughed disbelievingly. “No, you’re still Prime. Frag, I’m an aft.” He rubbed at his helm again, optics flickering. He pulled away. The new information swirled at him, pecked and beckoned. “Well, I’m overdue for recharge now and this is my floor. Keep your three crazy mech in line.” 

“Guess I’m glad we saved you.” With that final statement, Ratchet disappeared into one of the locked floors, and Optimus was left watching him go and stewing on his words. 

The hospital’s beginning were drenched in energon. That was to be expected.

Optimus wasn’t completely oblivious. He knew Jazz’s fighting prowess and mercurial centre had to come from somewhere. In hindsight, his reaction to Jazz visiting the Pits must’ve been- a test. A test that he’d failed drastically.

It wasn’t as though their pasts were to be caught on, anymore. Optimus _trusted_ Jazz, and that was what mattered. If he decided that his secrets were best kept secret, it was with good reason. If Jazz had really threatened the medics inside… he did what he had to. At the end, no one had been hurt. It was not Optimus’ place to dictate what he was to do. It was testimony to Jazz’s breaking, frantic psyche, though. What on Cybertron could Optimus do to help? All he could do was wait for Jazz to return, and speak to him then.

Optimus started down the stairwell, pedes echoing on the landing. He didn’t feel physically tired enough for recharge yet, though the weariness on his processor was immense. He wanted to see Megatron. Surely he would be awake. Even if he wasn’t, Optimus could stay there until he did. 

He stopped by one of the windows in the stairwell, touching its bars. The street out there was the one he’d nearly died on. And the one he’d also kissed Megatron on. Whatever electricity had been building between them — before the hearing, even — had crested. 

The mechs down there, outside, looked very small. He could almost forget the adrenaline and the fear and heat and wild huff and snap of their dentae from inside the hospital. There were some merely swaying to the same pulse-beast, standing on a spot, some that scampered in the shadows. But most eerily, far in the distance, his optics cycled and zoomed, there was a body too blurred to focus on that was hanging limply from a lamppost as though from a noose.

He pulled away. Away from the darker thoughts. 

He couldn’t quite remember which floor he’d bumped into Ratchet on and was the same one Megatron was being supplied med-grade on. He slid open the door to one, trying to ascertain if the corridor was familiar, but they all looked the same. Most of them were dim, lit only by their windows, though those with active rooms had lights seeping out from underneath. Optimus squinted down one of the hallways, about to dismiss it until he saw the unmoving ball curled by one of the walls, under a window.

His first instinct was to be struck by fear, thinking it was one of the turned mechs, but then he reminded himself that they wouldn’t be posed like that and that they wouldn’t be in the hospital. Would they?

“Soundwave?” he asked, down the corridor. There was not even a reaction for an answer. 

He stepped closer and closer until he could pick out the pale wash of purple biolights. “Soundwave,” he said, crouching down and reaching for him imploringly. “What are you doing down here?”

There was no answer. He shouldn’t have expected one. At least Soundwave looked up when Megatron or Jazz addressed him. Whatever Optimus was to him, he felt like a ghost. 

It struck him that maybe Soundwave was _lonely_ without either Megatron or Jazz. As far as Optimus could see, he always recharged with someone else. Their first few nights in the hospital had been with two empty berths; Optimus huddled up with Megatron and Jazz tangled up with Soundwave. It wasn’t explicitly romantic — at least, he figured it wasn’t for Soundwave, because previously Soundwave been recharging even beside Megatron, seeking some sort of warmth in the echo of the little bots he’d lost. 

“Hey,” Optimus coaxed. He found that he could slip an arm under Soundwave’s legs easily, and that he was light enough to be lifted so that Optimus could settle there, his legs under Soundwave’s and patting his helm soothingly. 

Soundwave did not react. The metal of his body was frigid.

Optimus wondered belatedly if he was dying. Until one of Soundwave’s data-cables snaked up around his neck like the noose he had just seen.

He froze.

Soundwave’s visor flickered to life to show a recording of Megatron, standing in the middle of the Pits of Kaon. “ _Leave_!” Its volume was tuned down, quiet enough to be a whisper of a roar.

“Do you need me to bring Megatron?” Optimus asked, trying to find a solution, any solution. Suddenly, even though he was in more of a safer position than he’d been for the last few orns, he felt like everything was slipping away. “Jazz?”

“ _Leave_!” was only repeated with no change to its intonation.

Optimus, a heavy weight on his spark, disentangled himself, and did.


	6. Chapter 6

Jazz _had_ been practically hired by the medics and was out running scavenging trips. Optimus recounted this to Megatron, who was already up and out of his med-berth and fully recovered by the next morning. They were in their room of four berths, but the other two mechs were missing as usual. He’d expressed his anxiety about Soundwave’s condition, and Megatron had simply nodded mutely and thinned his lips and not had any suggestions either. He said that he’d speak to him later.

As it was, though, they had moved onto lighter topics. Megatron wouldn’t stop touching his _legs_. “Yes, they fixed my legs, I know,” Optimus said, after Megatron prodded them for the fifth time. 

“You won’t need me to carry you any longer.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Only occasionally.”

Megatron was practically brazen with his affection. Optimus didn’t see any harm in it. If their lives were going to be dangerous, there was no use in holding back. He did not want to offline with regrets. Kissing Megatron had been one of his best choices so far. “When we’re being chased by a horde of dead mechs, you mean?”

“As frequently as that happens, there are times when we aren’t,” Megatron said. They were on a berth, Optimus settled between Megatron’s legs, his back to Megatron’s chest, listening to the rumble of his voice and engine as he nosed at the side of Optimus’ helm.

“I can think of something else legs are good for.” Optimus spread a servo across Megatron’s thighs bracketing his, tilting his hand meaningfully so it stroked the plating there, and felt the charge underneath _leap_.

There was a click and the sound of cooling fans filled the room. Optimus began to laugh. Megatron buried his face in his neck, flustered.

“Can I kiss you?” Optimus asked.

“No,” Megatron said, voice muffled. Optimus kissed the side of his helm anyway, and, if possible, Megatron’s fans roared louder. 

Optimus leaned in for another one, but Megatron lifted his head and they paused for a moment, optics flickering over each others faces, and then Megatron closed the gap between them and cradled his whole body as they kissed, turning Optimus to face him fully so that they were chest-to-chest. His lips were softer than Optimus had expected given the scars on the rest of his face. Optimus explored him slowly. Felt Megatron unfurling and warming as though under the rays of the sun.

Megatron’s servos were drifting over his body, sliding over plating to dip into seams that were growing rapidly more sensitive. Optimus reciprocated, tweaking the divot between Megatron’s thigh and panel that made him gasp into his mouth.

In response to Optimus’ smile against his kiss, Megatron’s engine growled. Optimus pulled away to laugh. In punishment, Megatron nipped at his throat-cabling, though quickly it melted into doting and laving instead. With Megatron’s helm hiding his neck, Optimus couldn’t reciprocate, and instead busied himself with where Megatron’s panel had opened, playing over the ridges of his spike and dipping a finger into his clenching valve. 

Optimus lost track of the kliks that they spent joined together like that. He had two fingers up and curling into Megatron’s valve and Megatron had three in his, spreading him apart, and their spikes slipped together in dripping and wet mock-kisses. They panted into each other’s mouths, clutching onto each other with their free arms and still stroking over each others seams. 

Their field tangled and meshed with arousal. Spurred on by the tight warmth of a valve around his fingers, Optimus would have to burn the berth covers later with the mess they were making, lubricant from their valves mingling between them, the wetness from their spikes, and slide of coolant where they’d both started to run hot. His own valve was practically squelching with each movement of Megatron’s servo. He couldn’t remember ever being so wet.

Without pre-empt, he rocked his hips up, dragging the folds of his valve across Megatron’s spike, and as he reached the tip, he wriggled slightly, eased the head in-between, and sunk down. 

Both Megatron’s hands flew up to grasp his helm and tug him into a devouring kiss. Optimus returned it just as fervently, starting to move on Megatron’s spike. It filled him up almost to a point of discomfort, and he could take at most half of its length, but as charge began to build between their connecting nodes, the discomfort was lost in a sea of desperate rutting, a chase for pleasure in overload. 

Lubricant coated Megatron’s spike, painted their panels. Optimus rocked his hips up and down to let his valve ripple over Megatron, clenching tightly. His spike was thick and long, and it broached places in him that left him reeling with the shocks they sent through his body. Megatron seemed to realise, because his hips rolled up, spike stroking those spots in him again and again until Optimus overloaded from his valve silently, his servos clenching into fists against Megatron’s chest.

Optimus was pulled back with a gasp, off Megatron’s spike. Megatron didn’t want to overload in him? He glanced up, but all Megatron did was guide him to the wetness and swell of his valve parting. Optimus took the encouragement, stroked his face again, accepting this choice, and plunged his own spike inside. Megatron’s back arched beneath him and he came at the sensation of Optimus entering alone. His vocaliser spat broken static as Optimus set a demanding pace, not in any way afraid of damaging Megatron, their thighs clanging together with each stroke. Megatron’s valve was contradiction of tight pulling and fluttering as though taken off-guard by each sudden thrust, but it felt so good it was unholy.

The berth was shaking against the wall; Megatron’s servos gripped its edges desperately as they slid downwards and so Optimus could put his full weight behind each shove of his spike into Megatron’s valve. His spike pummelled into his innermost hidden nodes until charge swelled up between them again, Optimus grabbing Megatron’s hips to pull him into each thrust until Megatron was letting loose only wanton sounds, his optics half-shuttered, lips parted for panting. 

Optimus leant down, kissed him, and rammed hard. Megatron hit his second overload in a row and the quiver and clench of his valve was too much. Optimus sprayed transfluid into him as he followed over the edge. He kept himself pressed as deeply into Megatron as he could, thick ropes of liquid spilling into Megatron’s valve — and fisted Megatron’s spike, jerking it in an imitation of a valve. 

With some surprise he realised that the latch in his spike had given way in preparation to empty his _entire_ transfluid reserves into Megatron. His gush of transfluid didn’t stop, still filling Megatron up, pressing against every node and carrying charge into every row of mesh. Megatron bucked under him, trying to grind Optimus deeper, and the pressure between them built until Megatron’s gestation tank spiralled open to accept his transfluid. A gut-deep satisfaction surged in him at the knowledge that he’d filled Megatron so well, and the nodes in there, suddenly flaring alight, sent Megatron into yet another valve overload. His voice was lost to a cry of white noise as Optimus pulled Megatron’s spike hard until he was coming from his spike at the same time as his valve twitched and cycled. Caught between overloads, Megatron was a dripping, panting, wet mess that Optimus pulled close and kissed senseless.

The gestation wouldn’t take — not without a spark merge, and they weren’t going to be crazy enough to do _that_. Still, Optimus felt that some deeply coded drive had been satisfied as soon as Megatron’s gestation tank had opened for him. 

“ _Four_ overloads,” Optimus panted, half-laughing, half-exuberant from the high of pleasure, pumping his hips a few times to make Megatron moan before withdrawing, his spike completely drained of transfluid as it slipped from Megatron’s valve. Only a small trickle, he was pleased to see, had been allowed to escape. The rest had been caught into Megatron’s tanks. “Are you still alive?” 

Megatron just sort of grunted in reply and threw an arm over his optics. 

Optimus kissed his elbow fondly and rose to look for something to clean them with. Then gave a shout of surprise as his legs more or less _failed_ under him as soon as he tried to stand from the berth and went crashing to the ground.

The room filled with Megatron’s wheezing laughter. “I see they didn’t fix you,” he said.

“Do you need another demonstration?” Optimus demanded from the floor. 

“No, no.” Megatron tipped his head over the side of the berth to look at Optimus’ sprawl, and his smile was everything.

*

When they woke from recharge, it was to Jazz’s leering expression from the opposite berth. “Oh boy,” Jazz said, dripping innuendo. “I know what that look means on _any_ mech.”

Megatron said, “How long have you been waiting there?”

“Jazz never recharges,” Jazz said, wriggling his fingers. Megatron turned his optics upwards.

Optimus asked, “Have you seen Soundwave?”

The facade of cheerfulness was dropped instantly. Optimus sensed that it unnerved Megatron, how easily Jazz could do that. “No. Just came back from a run. We- talked the day before yesterday, though. Should I be looking for him?”

“You know what state he’s in. I was wondering if he’s stopped by — changed his mind or signalled differently.”

“Ah,” Jazz said, standing and brushing off imaginary dust. “Sounds like my job.” Worriedly, Optimus watched him head for the door. Jazz seemed a bit bitter, having to look after Soundwave while Optimus and Megatron lay together in comfort after interface.

Optimus rose from the berth, field radiating concern and apology and contrition. When Jazz glanced up at him, he actually seemed surprised, and Optimus only had a fleeting moment to realise that he must’ve misinterpreted somehow before Megatron spoke with such gravity that Optimus knew he must’ve been preparing it for some time or that perhaps he had been, all along.

“Optimus, Jazz.” They both stilled. They’d never heard Megatron so solemn. Optimus turned to him, sudden dread building in his spark. “Before you leave, I have something of vital importance to tell you, particularly since we are _here_ now and repaired _._ Earlier in the downfall, I–”

He stopped.

It all unravelled so quickly that it seemed to happen backwards. The ground rushed up to his face; Megatron barrelled into him with all the speed of a freight train, Jazz’s servos flew up, the door slammed open and at least two blaster barrels and three scopes focused in on them and the voice of an enforcer yelled, “You’re all leaving _now_!”

They were hauled to their pedes by angry mechs, barrels shoved against their helms, hands tight and furious. Optimus grasped futilely for answers and came up empty-servo’d. What had happened? 

“Hey hey hey, what’s this for?” Jazz asked, and they only jammed their weapons harder against him. 

“One of your members violated our rules,” one of the mechs snarled, “compromising the _haven we provided you._ ”

_Soundwave._ Was it Soundwave? What had he done? Had he gone outside? Was he injured? Optimus’ processor spun with the possibilities, with worry and guilt. He should’ve stayed with him! Optimus should’ve prevented this.

They were marched down one of the stairwells, down and down and down in stern silence. Jazz said nothing more as they went, but his visor was an incandescent blue. At Optimus’ side, Megatron was sullenly quiet. 

The numbers of the flights counted down. Belatedly, Optimus was realising the severity. They were being taken all the way back to ground floor. Ratchet, the medics, the enforcers, were going to shove them out the doors. 

At least they’d been repaired.

That was his lingering thought as they were pushed into the reception foyer of the first floor, which opened up to a ring of medics standing there, arguing, scientists wringing their hands, enforcers standing solemnly at every wall with their weapons at their sides. In the centre was Soundwave, a small dark form, kneeling, a pair of stasis cuffs locking his servos together. 

“Jazz,” came Ratchet’s voice. Heated conversation dropped away and tension took its place, thick and electric. “You have to go. And I’d _really_ like a fragging explanation.” Optimus felt like the one who needed an explanation, but he remained silent.

Jazz’s helm was held high. “What did he do?” Optimus hadn’t known that Jazz’s voice could get so _cold_. The enforcers shifted at the tone, a few safeties clicking. Optimus could hardly believe that they were prepared to shoot.

“Your mech here trashed our laboratories and freed our test subjects, turned mechs that we were working on in _contained_ and _secure_ conditions, _into the hospital_.” Horror was a cold trickle down Optimus’ spine as Ratchet’s field flared wide, viciously angry. “Care to explain?”

The suspicion hit Optimus hard enough for his entire visual feed to flicker. It couldn’t be what he thought. Soundwave couldn’t have cared for dead mech that much.

It must’ve dawned on Jazz as well, because Jazz froze for a nano-klik, processor shuttering through the possibilities, before he stepped over to Soundwave, all optics on him as his pedes moved across the floor almost silently. His silver fingers, stark against Soundwave’s deep purple, curled under Soundwave’s helm. “Soundwave,” he said, visor flashing with anger, “tell me.”

Soundwave, on his knees, looking up, said nothing. The stillness stretched between them, tenuous, a tipping edge of whether Soundwave would submit or defy, would break his reticence or stay mute. Optimus wished he would speak. Say anything. Prove that he wasn’t out-of-control, give anyone a glimpse, a thread, a vague winding path of where to follow to find his spark. Prove that some of Jazz’s dedication and unravelling psyche had been for _something._

Jazz had been working himself to high hell to look after Soundwave. After all of them. While they were offered medical care and safety in dwelling he was out there fighting.

“You know what,” Ratchet said, sounding defeated, “don’t bother. Just get out of here. I’ve got one hell of a mess to clean up.”

All barrels were trained on them in one synchronised movement. Soundwave and Jazz remained locked in a battle of wills, visor to visor, and then Ratchet roared, “GET OUT!” His hands slashed into sharp-jawed surgeon blades. “Do you even understand what you’ve done?! These mechs in here, all their work, all their safety, everything they’ve clung onto, _betrayed!_ If I had any presence of mind, I wouldn’t have told them _not_ to _shoot you_! And if they any presence of mind, they wouldn’t _obey!_ ” 

Megatron moved, his footsteps shaking the lights overhead, picking Soundwave up in one enormous claw. Optimus followed behind him like a shadow and the barred doors of the hospital were flung open. There was a sharp _snap_ as the stasis cuffs simply crumpled in Megatron’s grip, and the look he shot back at Ratchet was nothing less than burning. 

Then they stepped back out onto the streets, and the doors slammed shut behind them. The plunge back into reality was harsh — slow-moving dead mech wandered further down the cracked street, a seeker flew far overhead but didn’t spot them — and Optimus found that his processor re-routed and re-formatted instantly, evaluating survival conditions and optimal paths and maps of Iacon and trying to scrounge up a plan. 

Megatron was already pulling away, Soundwave limp and motionless in his arms like a corpse. “We go to the old hotel,” he said. “The one that had been undergoing renovations before the blast. Nothing has changed; we were repaired, bound to leave soon regardless. We are lucky to have been released now, when there are not many dead mech nearby.”

All Jazz did was raise his blasters and follow, his silence livid and telling. Optimus fell in flank with his ion cannons shifted into place. They stalked down the streets like that, together, in haunting silence. Megatron had been right when he’d said that the infected mech were wandering further up and up into buildings. Fewer of them were on the streets, and they took a narrower side-alley, bracketed on both sides by high buildings and meant for pedestrians only, more alleys branching off it, their pede-falls loud in Optimus’ audials. 

A dead mech was scuffling down the end of the street, its limbs dangling from it, and Jazz’s shot pierced through its spark chamber for it to clatter down like scattered struts. The sound that it made as it hit the ground was followed by a larger, more ominous, noise. The sound of snarling. And many more pedes. Megatron froze, then ducked quickly into one of the side alleys and Optimus and Jazz followed, their pace more hurried now. 

Optimus’ spark pounded in his chest. Living was like this, now. And would be like this until they trekked all the way to the Well. 

When they reached the end of the alley they were faced with a few more mechs, onlining when they registered movement. This time Jazz did not use his blaster; he was on them in instants, a blade flashing, sinking and twisting into their chambers and easing their bodies down to the ground so they would not clatter.

Optimus followed his lead, pulling out the laser-knife and darting for the mech opposite one Jazz was taking down. The mech’s face, optics bleeding dark energon, face stained, mouth hanging open, almost gave him pause, but then it jolted to action much more quickly than he’d anticipated and raised an arm to intercept Optimus’ knife so the blade slid into its plating. Feeling the stirrings of fear, Optimus tried to wrench it free but found that he could not. Rasping nearby told him other mechs were starting to close in. 

He lurched back, out of range of the mech’s snapping jaws, panic fuelling him now, he wouldn’t shoot because it’d make too much noise, and then there was a presence behind him and Megtron’s claw plunged forth to pierce through the chest of the mech. 

Optimus wrenched his knife free. Gave Megatron a nod of thanks. Caught the body before it crashed down.

Life was like this, now. The interlude was over. 

*

The hotel was not empty when they arrived. Optimus and Jazz slashed and hacked their way through floor by floor as Megatron carried Soundwave and assisted where he could. They barricaded the doors and corridors after with whatever furniture was left, and stopped when they reached the ninth and Megatron’s choice of building became apparent.

The construction of the hotel was not complete, its ceiling open to the sky, scaffolding spiralling out from its centre in rectangles and branching close to nearby shorter buildings. Only mechs like Megatron, with his powerful thrusters, would be able to make the jump — easy coming and going without having to descend to the ground floor.

Megatron placed Soundwave into one of the half-finished rooms immediately, and Soundwave just– fell. He toppled over without the support and lay there. Then Megatron was exiting, one of his servos coming up to clutch at his helm, cover his face, and Optimus moved to soothe him.

Jazz disappeared into the room. 

Both Megatron and Optimus halted. They could hear the angered pacing of Jazz within. He hadn’t even shut the door. But perhaps he needed some illusion of privacy, because Megatron and Optimus stood out in the open landing of the ninth floor as Jazz just _broke down_.

Optimus didn’t know how else to describe it, and later, when he referred back to it in his head, it would always be as such. 

“You know what,” they heard Jazz say, “I don’t even know where to start.”

His pacing stopped.

“Do you think we can afford to do this?!” Jazz said, his vocaliser nearly cracking with desperation. “No one else is gonna say it, so it’s up to me— but before we couldn’t trust you with your own life. That was alright, still salvageable, because you were clinging in there for _our lives_ and we had your back. I thought I could find your will somewhere and bring it back, somehow. I’ve done with worse.

“Except now we can’t trust you with _our lives_ either! If one of those mechs you freed killed a medic, you bet at _least_ one of our processors would be splattered against that shiny white floor and the rest of us would be waitin’ in line!

“You think those mechs didn’t lose also lose all their Conjunxes and their sparkmates all their friends that _begged_ to be saved? You think you didn’t just destroy the last slagging thing they had left? The only reason why they were living _was for_ those test cures! 

“We all have our Primus-slagging griefs! I damn wish I could forget all of mine. They’re there and they’re clinging but you _shove ’em down_ and you focus on putting one pede in front of the other for whatever’s left! And you can’t tell me you’ve got nothing left because you’ve still got _Megatron_. Where’s that gladiator that swore his fealty to Megatron and swore his to protect and serve? ‘Cause I’m not seeing shit-all of him!”

Megatron turned away, at Optimus’ side. It seemed like he was going to go in to stop Jazz, but Optimus halted him with a single servo. Let Jazz get it out. Please. Otherwise they’d have two devastated mechs on their hands. Megatron shook with the indecision, and then he pulled away, to one of the other rooms. He couldn’t keep listening.

And Jazz was still going. “I don’t speak for the others, but as for me? I _can’t_. I told myself I was gonna protect you like how I protect Optimus, ‘cause _that’s_ all I’m living for now. I’m not like those two; I’m not about going to the Core or about trying to save the planet and being Prime and being a hero. I look at the small things. I’m just here to _protect_ everybody. I was gonna catch you everytime you fell, I was gonna look past the Decepticon face, I was gonna put the bullet that you couldn’t into every mech that tried to kill you. I was gonna hold you into recharge every night I was around. I _was_ doing all that. But these last deca-cycles have been _torture_ because I can’t do it if you don’t even try at all. So guess what.” Jazz’s in-vent rattled all the way in like he was steeling himself. He released it, a fist unclenching. “I can’t. I give up.”

There was a pause where Optimus had the distinct impression that Jazz was waiting, begging with silence that Soundwave would respond, would give some sort of signal to prove Jazz wrong. But no such signal came.

“I give up,” Jazz repeated. “Guess I was stupid to think that it was even worth trying.”

For some reason that made solvent prickle in the corner of _Optimus’_ optics, because Jazz didn’t deserve to sound so defeated, and Soundwave didn’t deserve all this grief. 

Then Jazz was storming out, and he ignored Optimus entirely and walked out to the far end of the building, out onto the scaffolding, onto its outermost edge until he was nothing but a swaying speck that just stood there and put his helm in his hands.

He looked like a statue out there alone, caught in some riptide of thoughts and horrors. 

Optimus found that he was just as locked into place by everyone’s warring griefs. Megatron, who was realising the true depth that he’d lost Soundwave into. Jazz, who was tormented by the fact that he’d _failed_ and had now shoved Soundwave away in a last-ditch effort to spur him into responding and got _nothing_.

Once, Optimus had been walking down the streets of Iacon and heard an injured turbo-sparrow. He’d heard its terrified and pained cries, but for all his looking, he couldn’t find it. He’d grown more and more desperate, even trying to pull strangers off the street to help him. And eventually it fell silent. Only breems later, he saw it jammed under a gutter with its spark extinguished. The sound of its dying cries had haunted him for morns. 

The memory of that cry didn’t hold a candle to the noise that escaped Soundwave. 

It was small, keening noise, like a wail without a voice, so desperate that his vocaliser guttered out half-way through before starting again to choke out the warbling note.

He was crying. Soundwave was crying. He was all alone, everything culminated — crying perhaps for the realisation that everything was dead and never coming back, perhaps for the realisation that he’d _failed_ everybody, betrayed their trust, Megatron and Jazz and his symbionts all. It broke Optimus’ spark.

Soundwave cried out again and again for some agony unknown. It was too soft for Jazz to hear and perhaps Megatron too, though it was no sobbing that Optimus was familiar with, only peals pained keens. Interspersed with plaintive and frail little mewls. The misery of it was so vivid that Optimus found solvent streaking down his _own_ cheeks. 

In the pause between Soundwave’s cries, Optimus couldn’t just sit by anymore. He staggered to his pedes and stumbled into the room— and froze.

Because above where Soundwave had his visor buried in his hands, where he was hunched over and shaking with the terror of living, whole frame wracked with trembling, on top of the unfinished wall, a pair of dully glowing optics stared back. Against what light was left in the shadow of Unicron Optimus could see that it was a small minibot form. A tail hung down beside it from the wall.

And it wasn’t the only one. On each wall, more optics opened like gleaming jewels and looked down at him. 

It couldn’t be. Optimus’ spark was stuck in his throat. His pedes couldn’t move from the floor.

Soundwave gave a desperate, broken noise again, and the cybercat — _Ravage_ , no, it _couldn’t_ be — landed deftly on his pedes. He was streaked with dried dark energon. His optics were faintly purple. His plating was bent and half-broken and rusting at the edges. He was undoubtably turned. 

Ravage was joined by more minibots that Optimus recognised. Buzzsaw. Laserbeak, carrying the injured body of Rumble. Frenzy. More that Optimus didn’t recognise and weren’t his minibots. One that had been sawed in half and whose dark spark cast the room into flickering light. Every one of them was turned, but not one attacked. 

They gathered around Soundwave, like moths to a flame, Ravage curling over his pedes, and Soundwave finally let his servos fall away and looked. He froze. And his keen petered out into a rolling click, a croon, reaching out for his symbionts.

Optimus had half a mind to stop him. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. His spark seized in indecision.

But Ravage did not attack. He allowed himself to be pet, to let Soundwave touch him reverently, as though in any moment he would disappear.

A different sound echoed from Soundwave, then. A sound Optimus hardly recognised… _music_. It emerged from his speakers, a haunting lament, so gentle and quiet that it seemed impossible in the roughness of the world. It was filled with an ache, a low longing. The small bots sat around him and listened in complete stillness. Song after song whispered from Soundwave’s speakers, all with a similar pain, all gentle, and Optimus was transfixed.

At some point he heard Megatron leave his room and go somewhere. Out to Jazz. But Optimus did not move. The world may as well have stopped again. 

And then the knees of the half-bot buckled and it slid to the floor. Its spark — which was white now, had become white again — faded, because no frame that had been sliced open like that could remain alive without some great miracle or some great evil. 

Soundwave’s songs eased away as he saw the unmoving, dead bot. The optics of the small ones around him _changed_ , faded back to purple where Optimus hadn’t even realised that they had been beginning to lighten into red, to white, to blue, whatever colour they had once been. Soundwave reached for the truly dead one, visor flashing with surprise.

And the rest of them left as silently as they had come, vanishing like shadows. 

The spell was broken. Optimus fell back, out into the open. 

His frame was over-heating. Something enormous, emotions all swirling together, was bubbling up inside him, theories and projections warring for place. He turned to see Megatron and Jazz standing at the edge of the scaffolding, talking, and stumbled to them through a haze that he could hardly comprehend. “Megatron,” he said, and Megatron seemed to look at him in slow-motion. “Jazz,” he said.

“Are you alright?” Megatron said, reaching for him, trying to wipe away the dried marks of coolant on his cheeks.

“I am,” Optimus said, hysterically. He grabbed Megatron — and somehow that was the tipping point. The incredulity was swallowed into a void, all the greyness swirling inwards into a vanishing shadow. “The mechs he freed from the hospital, Megatron — they were his _symbionts_.”

“I thought so,” Megatron said, and his entire frame drooped, as though the confirmation made him guiltier that he’d allow Jazz to unleash his fury. 

“No, you don’t get it.” Optimus shook him, could feel Jazz’s piercing gaze watching them. “ _It worked_. He played music for them and they turned _back_. The cure– works. We have to take him back to the hospital.”

“They’ll fire on sight,” came Jazz’s voice, void of all emotion.

“Optimus, incorrect.”

Soundwave stood behind him, helm held up for once, voice scratchy and rasping with disuse. He raised a few of his delicate fingers up to his throat cabling as though surprised that his vocaliser had made a sound at all. After that brief pause for surprise, however, he continued. “Only two symbionts under medics’ care. Were experiencing pain. Others, location, Soundwave previously uncertain.”

He stepped forwards, towards Jazz, whose visor slowly lit up because Soundwave was actually speaking, moving. And in his usual lithe grace his plating folded and slid together as he knelt in front of Jazz in a show of subservience, helm lowering. “Soundwave, apologises. For recklessness. Failure in communication. Emotional drives overrode core processors in irrationality. Hopes: Jazz will continue to treat him well.”

Jazz’s lips just– parted, and stared at Soundwave as though seeing him for the first time. His visor burned an even brighter blue. Its light reflected off the dark gleams of Soundwave’s plating, the sharp edges of his frame.

And hope was welling up in Optimus’ chest, lighter and headier than anything he’d ever felt.

“Who knew completely losing my slag would’ve worked?” Jazz finally asked, mouth twisting into the beginnings of a smile, and then he dropped to his knees as well so he was level with Soundwave and pulled him close.

“Don’t do that again. I know _I_ won’t,” Jazz said quietly, for all four to hear. “Primus. Scared the lights outta me. Thought they were gonna shoot you. Thought they were gonna shoot all of us.” He pressed his mouth to the curve of Soundwave’s helm, rocking them. His optics were shuttered tightly behind his visor. Soundwave raised a single data-cable in response and Jazz curled it around his wrist. “Thought it’d all be for nothing. Primus.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

Megatron’s claws dug into the window-ledge so hard that it crumbled. 

“You don’t need to worry,” Optimus commented from beside him. 

In response, Megatron’s engines rumbled. On the streets below, Soundwave walked, and his music was loud enough to drift all the way up to them. Soundwave always chose mournful melodies, like sweeping dark clouds, whereas Jazz chose the up-beat kicks with just a touch of poignancy. When they met, it built into a great crescendo of sound that echoed down every building. Jazz _danced_ with it, twirling around the solemn Soundwave as though he were some untameable elemental spirit. 

He’d played a lullaby, Soundwave had told them. A lullaby for his symbionts that he couldn’t believe were there, to send them to their final sleep, to finally accept that they were gone and return to the living that still needed him, but it had, if briefly, _cured_ them.

So they took to the streets and the mechs following Soundwave were a crowd of their own, slow and subdued, following him like he was some sort of messiah. Unicron’s grip on them hadn’t loosened yet, but Optimus was sure that, with time, it would. Already they seemed more like themselves, no longer driven by that terrible fury of Unicron’s.

Soundwave’s music seemed to work better than Jazz’s. Where Jazz went, mechs fumbled and chased after him with even less coordination than usual, his music disorienting in their processors. So Jazz always went back. He rounded them back to Soundwave, where they slowed to a lull and their remaining audials perked as though Soundwave was saying something to them, saying something with his music alone. 

Leading them out of the darkness.

Those that were injured but not dead when turned would be alive when the music finally freed them, but those that had been dead when turned simply collapsed and fell dead like that mini-bot had — unless they managed to repair their systems _while_ still under Unicron’s hold. The hospital would have an enormous task in their servos.

And those that had been offlined while under Unicron’s thrall were simply corpses. 

Optimus thought back to the seeker pair he had offlined. The second one had tried to attack him only after he had killed the first and it had been _furious._ Had that been the underlying processor still there, still alive? Still fighting to protect its sparktwin even when filled with dark energon? 

“We should go,” Optimus said, and Megatron did. They themselves had no capabilities of playing music, let alone music with that power, and Soundwave had lured most of the mechs in East Iacon away. There was an unending mass of them; Optimus had never seen so many in his life, filling every corner of the streets, pouring out from the buildings, walking docilely behind a lone dark-shaped mech — except he wasn’t alone. 

The shining silver of Jazz would slide in to join him, deliver him energon, weave in his own music, and they would walk. 

Megatron and Optimus exited out the other side of the building onto the streets — completely empty for once. “Ready?” Optimus said. He couldn’t wait to transform. He couldn’t remember the last time he had.

“One moment,” Megatron said, and walked to the curb underneath one of the lampposts that no longer worked. He shuttered his optics as he stood beneath it, back straight, helm lowered. Optimus watched curiously on. 

Then he punched straight through the lamppost and his mouth twisted into a snarl. Threw his helm back and roared an empty roar that rattled Optimus’ struts. He tore the thing down, field flaring with red-hot anger, its cables sparking as they were torn apart. 

Optimus hated seeing him so angry. He shuttered his optics, waiting for the sound of crumpling metal to end. What he wasn’t expecting was to be enveloped by a several tons of steel that wrapped around him and held him like he was something precious, something that could be easily broken. 

“You are something good that resulted out of _this_ ,” Megatron told him, and Optimus merely reset his optics again and bumped their helms together. 

“But when Iacon is rebuilt, will we lose it? Will we still be fighting?” Optimus asked. “Of the castes — the upper class will probably have their homes rebuilt first. Will you protest? Will you fight it?”

Megatron paused. Optimus could feel his servos spin into claws, and then back into servos, indecision manifested. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” Optimus admitted, and Megatron withdrew from him. 

The lamp-post was a small crumpled thing on the ground. Without looking at it any longer, Optimus transformed into his alt-mode, engine firing with a rumble. 

“Do you know, Shockwave–“ Megatron said, his hand pausing on Optimus’ door, “asked to be kept if he ever turned because he believed a cure would be found. So we didn’t offline him. We didn’t even touch him when we found him.” He opened the door, sat in, and Optimus’ began to move. Megatron rested his helm against Optimus’ window. “When we passed him by the second time, someone else had. They shot him straight through the spark. They must’ve thought it a mercy. Now there _is_ a cure.”

Optimus knew the streets well. He knew the route out and towards the highway, towards the Well. Driving was almost on auto-pilot.

“He’ll never return now,” Megatron said. “I killed so many bots that will never return either.”

“It’s your cause,” Optimus said from his radio. His wheels spun faster. The streets were all empty because Soundwave and Jazz had done their jobs well. They were empty. Empty of everything. Mechs and life and memories. “The Decepticon cause.”

Optimus had offlined mechs that could’ve been turned back, too, though not nearly as many as Megatron had. “How did you live with killing in the Pit? It was just something that had to be done, wasn’t it? I watched all your speeches, Megatron. You said for every mech you killed, you’d fight harder to save any more having to become gladiators.”

The buildings dropped away suddenly to spread into the highway. The horizon unfolded ahead of them, an unbroken bar of gradient light that they hadn’t seen for a long time. He drove towards that light between the curve of a Unicron sky and asphalt of the road.

“So to honour their lives with a cause,” Megatron said.

“You _couldn’t have survived_ without it,” Optimus pointed out. “We wouldn’t be going out there, now, to the Core if you hadn’t. And remember that even though Soundwave tried never to kill, Jazz offlined them anyway.”

“I had always raised him to be of pure spark,” Megatron sighed, and his words distantly reminded Optimus of something Megatron had said about Soundwave, much earlier. But he didn’t pursue it. 

“If Unicron has infected the Core, and if we can reverse that–“ Optimus’ engines roared louder, in anticipation. There were some mechs on the highway, but they were spread so far and sluggishly that Optimus drove by without harm. “Then I think their lives will have been honoured. That is up to your spark to decide.”

“The burden will not let go, even if we do.” Because there was too much that he had lost. 

“No,” Optimus agreed. “But you will know that you did right by them.”

*

He hadn’t recharged for the last four cycles. 

Ratchet could feel himself slipping away. The hospital- wasn’t in a good state. Meltdown had lived up to his name and sat in the rec-room without moving for joors on end, and just last cycle he’d found him trying to crush his own spark by filling himself up with so much solvent that his lines burst.

Now Meltdown had been detained and strapped into one of the medical berths, but Ratchet doubted he’d be the last. Their freed experiments hadn’t made an appearance yet. They hadn’t even been seen inside the hospital’s corridors, and that kept every medic on his toes, unable to recharge at night, unable to focus and think. 

He cursed himself out for _ever_ letting the cursed Prime and his mechs in. 

His helm hit the bars of the window of his room, debating for the millionth time on giving up. It was useless. The cures hadn’t worked anyway. No nanite they invented had come close to fighting the pervasive chemical composition of the dark energon. But they had held out for hope and worked because there was no other was to justify their hospital. Now that it’d all come crashing down, it was just… hard to get back up again.

Movement caught his eye. Outside.

Ratchet’s frame stiffened, froze, and emergency protocols kicked in before he could dismiss them and try to sort out the warring data-streams in his head. 

_Wheeljack._

But he’d been turned. Ratchet had seen it with his own optics. Wheeljack— Primus, Ratchet hadn’t let him in. He’d waited so trustingly at the front of the hospital, never walking away even when the mechs came for him, trusting in his oldest and most faithful friend — and all the other medics had all been watching and Ratchet had only newly been labelled head medic because the last one had died when their Conjunx had turned on the table and they’d just declined refugee to a whole group of mechs that’d been Triage’s classmates _and Ratchet hadn’t let him in._

His optics were as blue as Ratchet remembered.

Maybe it was penance. Ratchet didn’t care. Maybe it was a hallucination. Maybe he’d finally gone off the deep end.

He didn’t care.

Let it be fragging penance. 

He ran down all thirty flights of stairs and barrelled through the other medics, afraid that when he got down, Wheeljack would be gone. Not even an empty frame. Unicron would have his last laugh.

But Wheeljack was still there when Ratchet reached the ground floor. He was still there. He was smiling. Optics still blue. He asked Ratchet what took him.

Then he said there was a cure. Primus damn everything — a _cure_. There were other mechs out there, injured, injured from the initial blast or during the time they were dead. They needed his help. They needed all their help. 

Ratchet threw open the doors and he called every last medic down. 

*

They had paused in their journey to recharge, off on one side of the elevated highway, tangled together in a lightly dozing mass. Optimus was just waking, withdrawing from Megatron, sitting up, stretching his wires and scrolling through his diagnostic feed. It came back clean. Moreover, around them, there were no threats to be seen. He felt safe. Safe to merely gaze over the frame of Megatron, his revolutionary and— lover? He wasn’t sure what they were. In the plunge of the apocalypse, they had clung together. When it ended, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t fly apart as volatile as they had began.

Optimus loathed thinking like that. But if Megatron didn’t want to stay, he could not force him. It was sombre and sobering, and Optimus tried to imagine that day would never come. The apocalypse would end, surely, and perhaps, only perhaps, Megatron would stay.

For the moment he could look over Megatron, convinced that Megatron wanted him back. The big grey mech was just waking from recharge, stirring possibly because of Optimus’ movement. This was the moment that Optimus enjoyed the most. While his frame heated at the thought of Megatron fighting, Megatron as powerful as a tank, Megatron snapping a pair of stasis cuffs with no more than two claws… the moment when he woke and was still disoriented was too spark-touching to pass up.

He had allowed Optimus to see this, to see him waking. It might’ve seemed like an insignificant vulnerability considering what else Optimus had seen of him, but for some reason it touched him particularly. It was so _mundane._ He could imagine a future being able to watch Megatron waking, again and again, each morning. It was part of a future he dreamed of. 

Megatron whirred lowly in his throat. His field took on a questioning tinge and wavered out to brush at Optimus’, who indulged him and swirled their EM fields together as though they were music, the waves superimposing as they overlapped, bridging phase shifts with gentle pulses. Megatron’s optics practically melted with the affection. 

Optimus leant down to kiss him.

Then his helm was ringing with a painful clang because Megatron had surged up to smash Optimus’ helm back and his claws were gripping Optimus’ frame so hard they nearly tore dents because there was a mech behind him, must have been _waiting on the underside of the bridge and somehow crawled up,_ sinking its fangs into Megatron’s neck cabling where because he’d tipped his helm up he’d exposed a vulnerable spot. It pierced. The wire resisted and then gave.

The fact that the mech was a mech — would be able to be cured, still had a spark inside, did not cross Optimus’ processor for even the faintest nano-klik as he rammed his ion cannon into its half-melted optic and blasted its processor apart. It didn’t fall back, and so Optimus shoved his ion cannon further _into_ its body until it blew apart at the seams, spark flexing and erupting in its casing. He was aware that Megatron had frozen still, a servo clasped over the wound, optics shuttering blankly, energon seeping between his fingers. It was black. It was turning black.

Optimus was dragging Megatron forwards, away from the edge of the highway because there could be more, trying to get his attention, babbling that he’d take them back, take them back to Soundwave this instant, but Megatron silenced him with nothing but a finger to his lips. 

“I was going to tell you,” Megatron said, and somehow his optics had regained that softness. “You and Jazz both, in the hospital, but we were interrupted.”

“Tell me _what? What_ could you possibly tell me right now?” His optics followed the trickle of that dark energon that slid over his frame. There was _nothing_ that could make this right. They were- they were still some distance away from Iacon. Megatron could turn before then. Optimus wouldn’t take the chance. 

“I was infected near the start of the disaster,” Megatron said, and Optimus’ world- _stopped._

He looked for something to say, but didn’t have anything. Didn’t know how to respond. 

“That was how I lost all my Decepticons,” he said. “Soundwave would not allow them to offline me, and he was the only one who remained by my side because there was no one to drag him away this time. So they left. Every last one of them. They left, and then I never turned.”

Optimus had nothing to say, torn between relief, horror, and something else, something much more awed. He placed his servos against Megatron’s shoulders as though to remind himself that Megatron was real.

“Of all deities, _Unicron_ offered me a second chance.” Megatron shook his helm, disbelieving still. “Did you never wonder why I was not under-fuelled when you arrived? Did you never wonder why Soundwave had not died yet despite his sacrificial, suicidal tendencies? I gathered energon for him. I kept him somewhere in hopes that he would rise from his grief. I drank dark energon from offlined mechs. They never attacked me.”

He had never seen Megatron out there _alone,_ Optimus realised _._ There had always been someone else, Optimus, Jazz, Soundwave, with him, carried by him, when they were attacked. Megatron hadn’t been injured and battered when they’d first met. Not like Jazz was. Not like when he and Soundwave had returned after that first run. Megatron hadn’t returned injured when he’d briefly gone out to fetch Optimus energon.

And Megatron couldn’t have told them right at the start because they would’ve never trusted him if his spark was _dark._

He grappled with the incredulity of it. Megatron had been immune all this time. _Megatron._

He’d been in good condition when they’d first met. No other Decepticon except Soundwave, when they should’ve survived, had been there. Soundwave’s tendencies were unsustainable when they were moving. Megatron’s energon that night when it’d splattered all over Optimus’ faceplates had been too dark to see and he remembered how it _burned._ And when they’d stood again he saw no sign of the usual purple energon. Megatron intimidated the medics and even Ratchet out of treating him and inserted his energon line himself. Megatron had pulled away from overloading in him when they were interfacing. Megatron could leap several floors. Even in the pits he hadn’t been _that_ strong _._

All these little pieces, coming together. 

“You could’ve gone to the Core on your own.”

“Then Soundwave would’ve died,” Megatron said, with all the conviction that his words were the truth. “He had stayed with me when all else left and I had taken _everything_ from him. How could I leave? I tried to liaison with the hospital, to allow them to experiment on me as long as they provided him refuge, but I was never permitted even into _speaking_ range. And so when we were, unbelievably, allowed inside — I was about to tell you both. I was going to request Jazz to consult their head medic.”

And Optimus remembered it. Just as the door had been kicked down, Megatron had been about to say _something_. He had forgotten it in the chaos in the aftermath.

“But after— were you going to tell _me_?”

“…I didn’t think it relevant. I knew journeying to the Core was important to you; you would not have wanted me to go alone,” Megatron said, his optics lowering. He was still afraid, Optimus realised. Afraid that perhaps any day he would turn — turn _on_ Optimus, or that Optimus would leave him. He knew that Optimus had been terrified during the long nights, during the fights, and he must’ve thought that that terror would carry over to him. It suddenly struck him that he felt like _Megatron_ , the different violent and tyrant mech that the Council had seen. 

Optimus had to resolve him of this fear. They could not go to the Core, to the heart of the world and Unicron’s corruption, with this lingering between them. Optimus simply would not allow it. If Soundwave was allowed so great a miracle as bringing mech back from the dead, then Optimus would believe that Megatron could be immune.

“Megatron,” he said, eyes narrowing, “was this why you wouldn’t give me your transfluid? How would we be able to create _sparklings_ if you kept hiding the colour of your spark?”

Megatron _reeled_ back. His shock was palpable. He must’ve been expecting something, anything, else. Then his metal flushed just the faintest bit.

“We’ve been sharing so many fluids!” Optimus gestured at his mouth indignantly. “You split my lip when you first kissed me!” 

“It felt too far,” Megatron said. 

To prove him wrong, Optimus shoved him down and kissed him, and kissed him, again and again. “Stupid ‘bot,” he said, voice radiating affection. “Even if you have no faith in yourself, _I do._ This isn’t just _your_ second chance. It’s mine as well. Do you understand?”

“For what?” Megatron asked, half against his lips.

“I let you go in the hearing,” Optimus said. “Primus’ll have to kill me to make me let go again.” His field radiated his sincerity, filling it with every once of his conviction and pressing it onto, into, Megatron. He _needed_ Megatron to understand. “Being immune isn’t something for fear. It isn’t something _different_ that we have to look away from, and we’ve been looking away from too much. If I die because you turn suddenly–” he held Megatron’s helm still, forced him to stare into Optimus’ optics, “–then I die. I accept that.”

Megatron rested his helm against Optimus’ and his EM field returned a _thank you_ so obscurely he could’ve believed he only imagined it.

*

When they arrived at the Well, the metal around it had been torn, peeled up and cooled where it’d melted molten. The Well itself — usually framed by an enormous door, leading into the lower chambers towards the Core were sparks were taken — was nothing but a gaping black maw into an abyss. They started down its sides, the pede-holds precarious, until they reached an edge where there was no more metal and it dropped into a cliff of the unknown.

Optimus’ optics cycled, zoomed, and he swore that he could see light down in the depths, very faintly. It must’ve been the Core.

There was a _smell_ to dark energon, now that he realised it. It smelt like acerbic tar and burnt metal and stung of sharp chemicals. 

Megatron gestured for him to come closer, into reach, and when Optimus moved towards him, his pede– _missed_.

He’d been planning to speak to Megatron, to tell him that if they went down and if they offlined, that, above all, Optimus _would be by his side_. That in that moment they were not adversaries any longer, that they were not contestants to be Prime, that they were just two mechs together that’d been through hardships — though no hardship that was more brutal nor grating than those faced by any other mech than they’d met. They were nothing special, nothing outstanding, only lucky.

What dreadful irony there was, to that.

It was swallowed all by the rush of air and the void, a cavern like a mouth that swallowed him whole. He heard the shout of his name but he could not stop falling. Megatron collided into him with shocking familiarity, wrapping around him, cradling his smaller body, trying to turn over so that he could get his pedes somehow below them and ignite his thrusters to slow their descent, but it was as though the entire world was wavering. 

What Megatron thought was down wasn’t down, and the blue of the light that Optimus knew must’ve been below them was constantly whirling, around and around, and he caught glimpses of huge glistening spikes where dark energon had crusted together like enormous claws. 

And still, they fell, whether it was down or sideways or upwards, Optimus had no clue. Into the depths. 

He swore he saw _faces_ as they passed, faces in the ridged walls of dark energon, faces that were mangled in screams and pain, and Megatron had just clasped a thick arm around his helm when they collided into the bottom.

Megatron’s gasp was quiet but it might as well have been a shout. They were bathed in blue. The Core flickered beside them, pierced by spikes of dark energon, huge and humming and the spark of their world, but Optimus found his optics drawn instead to the thick stalagmite that jutted straight through Megatron’s middle.

“Megatron?” he whispered, as though it was all a hallucination that a word could break. He scrambled to his pedes. The wound was worse than he’d expected, the metal around it already curling, washing out with colour, fading into a darker grey. Megatron’s optics flickered.

“Optimus,” he murmured.

Desperately, Optimus looked up at the Core — and threw himself and tore at it. He ripped through the thin spikes that surrounded it, uncaring if they lacerated open his hands and spilled dark energon into his lines. If anything could help Megatron, it would be the Core. Surely– surely–

Dark energon flecked his face-plates. He screamed at it, tearing through it even as it seemed to grow back with every harsh snap. He couldn’t– wouldn’t – let Megatron die here! Not in another pit, just like the pits he had been so desperate to get out of!

He could feel his spark pumping with something unnatural. The dark energon had reached it already. It made him more vicious, more frenzied, slashing and ripping and even mauling it out with his teeth, fighting both what was outside and inside him, and for one moment, one glorious moment, the Core was free—

Everything burst into white.

_Orion Pax. You have arrived just in time._

He was floating in air. Where was Megatron? 

_Your friend is here._

Megatron faded into view. His optics opened, slowly, and Optimus’ hands felt desperately at the place where he’d remembered seeing that festering wound–

“I was dying,” Megatron said, and his words took a strange quality in their unreal space. 

_You were. But suffer no longer. You have done well, my children. The end is near._

“I thought it was already the end,” Optimus said, still unsure if he was dreaming. He would look towards the source of the voice but it seemed to come from everywhere. 

_Unicron will reach for me. He will take hold of this container in which I rest, and in the moment he opens it, he will be absorbed._

That meant–

_Cybertron will die,_ Primus said, because it was undoubtably Primus. Optimus could feel his presence now, spreading greater than anything he’d ever witnessed, and shook with the severity of his god’s words. This was the reality in its terrifying absolute strength. _Fully and eternally._

Something calming rested on them even though Optimus knew he should’ve been panicking, Primus himself soothing the worry in their sparks. Primus was not afraid to die. 

_Unicron has long been my forsworn destroyer, but he will not destroy my greatest creations of all: my children._

_Carry this message. Lead my children from Cybertron and take them into the stars, into a journey no Cybertronian has ventured before. There will be nothing left for you here, nothing but for rust and ash and towers falling under our unending struggle. Leave and never return._

_For this, I have yet something to bestow upon you to deliver to its rightful place. It will aid in the exodus of my spark and the only home you have ever known._

_My child. Behold, the Matrix of Leadership._

Optimus saw Megatron’s optics squeeze shut tightly. 

_Oh,_ he thought, because that meant everything Megatron had believed in was for naught. Primus himself had disagreed with Megatron’s beliefs that the Council had picked the wrong mech. Optimus warred within himself, his spark torn between duty and a promise he’d made out of– 

He could admit it to himself now. It was love. 

It was the hearing all over again. Optimus, again, had been announced Prime. 

Megatron, kneeling over him, energon splattering from his mouth as he was beaten again and again; Soundwave, falling between two buildings; Jazz, sliding from mask to mask however he was needed; Ratchet, able to make choices between death and more death (and one more. A distant body, hanging _himself_ )— Optimus had seen the strength of mechs everywhere he had gone. He had seen the tragedy, _their_ tragedies. He had seen the fortitude and intensity and the pain of mechs just like him. _Anyone_ could take the Matrix because they all deserved it! They led _themselves_ through the end of the world, and they led every other mech they came across with the story of their survival alone.

He could not, _would_ not, make the same mistake twice!

Through all the horror he’d found one shining light — Megatron. He would not betray him his beliefs and his hope. He’d vowed that he would reject it. He would not let him go. Not again.

“I cannot take this,” he said.

The resolve firmed in him when he saw broad grey shoulders draw downwards in dismay. In the hearing, Optimus had rejected it at first, too. The announcement must’ve rang like deja vu.

“I can’t take this!” he said, and his servos balled into fists. Primus must’ve had a way. Wasn’t he supposed to be their god? Optimus did not deserve the Matrix!

_It is the last of what I am able to give to the rightful mech deserving: the mech who never once relinquished his ideals, never once gave up on hope, never once wavered in fear of Unicron’s touch, who rose even from the deepest chasms of grief. The mech who clung through every terror for love. The mech who never once turned his back on another._

But that wasn’t Optimus, he rationalised wildly, searching for a way out. That description didn’t fit him. He had changed his mind. He had been desperately afraid. He hadn’t faced more horrors than any other mech. He’d never fallen to the worst of grief and climbed back out. Primus was wrong!

_Deliver the Matrix to the one that leads all of my children out of Unicron’s hold,_ Primus said. _The truest leader who needs not even a word to be followed, who is capable of leading with only the raw and honest emotion of his spark._

Megatron’s optics flew open in understanding.

Then they were on their knees on the harsh ground again and the smell of dark energon was still there, the familiar visage of Unicron in the sky, the pit deep into the well, no wounds in their bodies, but something new lay between them, a sphere with two handles thrumming with light and power. 

Megatron’s shout was of pure delight, and he swept Optimus and the Matrix up, and even though they clattered together, the Matrix didn’t react to either Optimus nor Megatron because _he wasn’t Prime._

Optimus wasn’t Prime. Neither of them were.

The shock of it was fading fast, replaced with–

Megatron staring back at him, radiant as the sun that Optimus hadn’t seen for orns. The Matrix of Leadership was dropped and landed between them, at their pedes, forgotten, because Optimus had grabbed him by the helm and hauled him forwards in a kiss.

His spark felt like it was bursting, so light that perhaps he’d just float entirely away. It was right. It was true. Oh, Primus. It was all true. His worries scattered like skittering shadows chased away by a bright candle. 

Through all the horror of the apocalypse, through all the horror of Unicron’s descent upon Cybertron, through all the death and the destruction, through all of the sorrow and the grief, there would be no more fighting. Even though their world was dying and _would_ die and never rebuild, its people would survive, more united and stronger than ever before because-

A mech of Kaon, from the lowest point of their world in the pits where lives and sparks were bought with creds- _had been chosen as Prime_. Even in the wreckage of everything, their revolution held true; the music would wake the people from Unicron’s blood, and when they opened their optics after so long in the dark they would see their Prime for the first time, not a bright-painted Ionian mech that they expected, but one so silently loyal to an unending dedication for those that he deemed family.

Optimus swayed on his pedes. Megatron’s truth had been accepted. His words had been heard and they _rang_ true. Primus himself had affirmed it. Megatron had done it. And _Optimus_ , in that moment between when he thought he had to choose, had chosen Megatron _._ He hadn't turned back on what he'd sworn to believe now even when he'd been so certain that the whole world was on the line. His spark sung in him, brilliant and bright and exultant.

Optimus had made the right choice. He’d chosen to stay, to come, to walk these steps with Megatron and Jazz and Soundwave and all these revelations had been there and _so close_ all along. 

Finally, _finally_ , they had faced the darkness and found the light. He saw it now. A spark: the dawn of a new era.

Surely, Optimus thought, it was the sun rising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! all posted because _someone_ guessed out the ending. 
> 
> Soundwave becoming Prime has been an idea that's been bouncing around my skull for ages. It was originally meant to be in one of my other fics, but I couldn't work it in there, and so it was planned in this one instead from the start. The inspiration comes from Soundblaster who is basically Soundwave, but is the avatar of Logos Prime. 
> 
> The ending might read like a 'roll credits' moment with the title dropped in there, but the title was selected after the entire story was written. It's chosen for the fact that this isn't supposed to be a sad story. The intent here was for positive change.
> 
> The story was originally intended to be called 'tea party for ten', being our 4 main cast, 5 symbionts, and Shockwave in absentia — because while 6 of them aren't there, their presences are still very much felt. There was a short excerpt written about Shockwave very early on so _I_ knew exactly what had happened to him and all the other characters could reference him appropriately if they did. But that really only turned out to be Megatron. Either way, that isn't actually going to be posted up, but you can ask about it if you like!
> 
> This has also been an exercise into how I should update: chapters or as one? There were some significant edits while the story was still posting, but overall, I think it's better for me to slap it out as 1 big fic in the future. I physically can't sit on a story for so long because self-doubt eats me up from inside. I know some people can post a fic out over the course of months, years, and it's likely that this really helps for visibility in the "Newest Updates", but I can't do it; and then it just seems unfair to make people wait it out for weeks for a story that's already been written and I _know_ I can give you more of. 
> 
> But yeah. That's it. I don't have anything else planned in this 'verse for now. Again, thank you everybody for stopping by!


End file.
